Where Is the Trump Phone?

This summer, the Trump family announced the launch of a Trump-branded phone, which they claimed would be a device “built by Americans, for Americans.” At the time, Eric Trump said that his family hoped to “do it better than anybody” when it came to delivering for mobile users. Trump Mobile, which sells a smartphone dubbed T1, licenses the Trump family name from the Trump Organization, and has promised to deliver “All-American performance” to its patriotic buyers.

Trump Mobile may yet deliver on its lofty promises—if, indeed, the phone ever ships.

NBC reports that, despite the fact that its journalists ordered one of the company’s devices many months ago, they have yet to see one materialize. Indeed, Trump Mobile initially claimed that its phone would be released to the public in August of this year. However, you may have noticed that August has come and gone, and now it’s almost Thanksgiving. The T1 has not been released yet. Trump Mobile is currently promising its supporters that the phone will be released “later this year.” But there isn’t a whole lot of “later” left in the year, so the company better get busy if it wants to make good on that promise.

NBC claims that they reached out to the company’s customer support line, and an operator blamed the government shutdown for a delay in the phone deliveries. The outlet writes that the official said…

the delivery would now be in the “beginning of December,” with no specific date. The operator cited the government shutdown as a reason for the delay, without further explanation.

What the government shutdown would possibly have to do with this private company’s failure to launch its promised device is unknown. Maybe the internal messaging emails for the White House and this company got mixed up.

Gizmodo also called the Trump Mobile customer support line, and an operator told us that the phone was now expected out at the end of December. However, the operator said they didn’t know why the device’s release had been delayed.

NBC isn’t the only outlet that has been tracking this. In October, USA Today also questioned why the T1 was still MIA, and The Verge’s Dominic Preston recently questioned whether the Trump phone even exists. In a recent screed, Preston wrote: “For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been asking — repeatedly — where the promised Trump phone is, whether it exists, and what happened to all the money people have already paid for deposits. And I’m going to keep doing that every week for the foreseeable future.”

Trump Mobile has been criticized previously for giving unclear or incomplete information about its product. Indeed, the company also initially promised that its devices would be manufactured in the U.S. However, in June, The Verge noted that, not long after that promise was made, the company’s website was scrubbed of such language. A Trump Mobile spokesperson later told USA Today that the phones were “proudly being made in America” and “speculation to the contrary is simply inaccurate.” The website currently promises that “American hands” are “behind every device,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Gizmodo reached out to Trump Mobile and the Trump Organization for more information.

Given that Trump has spent years stamping his name on every product under the sun—from hotels to golf courses to board games and hamburgers—the fact that he finally got around to cellular devices is no great shock. Given Trump’s history of failed businesses, it’s also to be expected that the phone company has so far failed to give consumers what they want. But the future is unwritten, and maybe Trump Mobile is mere weeks away from shipping the greatest phone ever created to its eager customers.

The Trump family has launched numerous business ventures since Trump reassumed his position as Leader of the Free World, and, according to reports, the family is making bank. In a recent report from PBS, journalist Zeke Faux estimated that the Trump family had made hundreds of millions of dollars from World Liberty Financial, which is just one of their cryptocurrency businesses.