Promises The ‘Trump Phone’ Would Be ‘Made In USA’ Lasted 1/100th Of A Scaramucci
from the fake-plastic-trees dept
Last week we noted how the Trump administration had cooked up a half-assed wireless phone company. Even calling it a phone company is generous: It’s basically a licensing agreement and a lazy coat of paint on another, half-assed MVNO effort (Patriot Mobile), which in turn just resells T-Mobile service.
A cornerstone of the supposed company was a new $500 Trump T1 phone. To pitch the phone, the press release had a badly photoshopped rendition of what the so-far-nonexistent phone would look like (curiously missing a camera flash), peppered with claims the phone would be “proudly designed and built in the United States.”
As we noted at the time, it would likely be just weeks before people realized the “made in America” claims weren’t true. And it sounds like we didn’t even have to wait that long. The Verge noticed that all of the “made in America” claims have been stripped from the Trump website, replaced with far-more vague language about how the phone is ambiguously infused with American sentiment:
“The T1’s new tagline is “Premium Performance. Proudly American.” Its website says the device is “designed with American values in mind” and there are “American hands behind every device.” Under Key Features, the first thing listed is “American-Proud Design.” None of this indicates, well, anything. It certainly doesn’t say the device is made in the USA, or even designed in the USA. There are just… some hands. In America.”
Trump Mobile folks are still trying to claim the phone will be made in America. At least until press reports in another month or two indicating that’s clearly not true. Again. The Verge notes that the screen size has gotten smaller in the website description, and they eliminated listing RAM specifications for some reason.
Trump operates at a fourth-grade reading level and genuinely believes his ignorant tariff plan will somehow magically force all manufacturing back to the United States. But as countless journalists and analysts have dissected, it would be literally impossible to manufacture an affordable phone in the United States without resorting to slave labor and ignoring all labor and environmental law.
Which is to say the weird Trump zealots might actually believe (or have been told) this is a real thing that they’re capable of, but it’s simply never happening. Still, the Trump boys have been pouring it on thick, with Eric Trump going on TV to claim that not only will the Trump phone be made in the USA, but all company support would be USA based as well:
“You’re not calling up call centers in Bangladesh − do it right out of St. Louis, Missouri, and you’re going to have phones that are made right here in the United States of America,” [Eric said]. He added Trump Mobile is “going to revolutionize cell phones, mobile calling” as it will fully operate in the U.S.
“I really believe we’re gonna have one of the great kind of tech platforms as part of the Trump Organization of any company in the world,” he added.
This is really all just lazy performance art for very dim people.
In many ways a lazily branded mobile phone MVNO hyping a so-far-nonexistent phone pretending to be American made is a perfect encapsulation of the “Trump experience.” Just complete pointless artifice from start to finish, with a singular function: hollow grift in the golden age of corruption.
Filed Under: broadband, bullshit, china, donald trump, eric trump, made in america, t1, tariffs, telecom, trade war, wireless
Companies: trump mobile
Comments on “Promises The ‘Trump Phone’ Would Be ‘Made In USA’ Lasted 1/100th Of A Scaramucci”
Question
Is the gold plated, painted or only photoshopped?
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All three in fact! It’s “gold-plated” for marketing purposes, gold-painted for legal purposes, and photoshopped for practical purposes since it doesn’t actually exist yet.
Hey, this MIGHT be true… if they have a call center in the state that simply hangs up on you, and no other tech support options at all.
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Or it’s an AI call center.
With all the problems that brings.
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My favorite is the company I work for outsources critical Medicare and back end claims to some place I guess by their accents, Bangladesh maybe. And you can hear the are in some big open office plan of awfulness but the worst part is they make them use fake white people names as if we are a bunch of idiots or something. It’s pretty sad.
Every other nation is laughing up their sleeves at the yahoos running our country.
Now you know why slavery is still legal in the US when its inflicted on prisoners.
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See the story ‘Made in the USA’ Behind Bars, for example, about people working for under a dollar a day raising fish for sale at Whole Foods. That caused some outrage, and it’s far from the only case.
Slavery and involuntary servitude are legal when done to ex-prisoners, too. It doesn’t come up much, except in the case of “walk around the neighborhood and tell everyone you’re a sex offender.”
Also, ignoring all labor and environmental law? Wasn’t there already a BestNetTech story about how that’s happening?
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realizes something
Oh my god, is that why states are all building tons of new prisons, including a new FEMA-paid-for Alligator Alcatraz at a cost of $500,000 a year per inmate?
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Seems to me that this could well be the plan
Womp womp.
Don’t you think that’s giving him too much credit?
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I certainly think that’s giving him far too much credit. He’s illiterate. He cannot read so much as a single sentence — nor can he speak a single cogent sentence. He’s an absolute moron AND he has rapidly advancing dementia AND he’s clearly psychotic.
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According to what metric? The one before or after the gutting of the US Department of Education?
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Texas state education levels, I think.
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I suspect 4th grade students are still fairly intellect. I think it might be around 8th grade that the “beat the intelligence out of them” really starts to show results.
/s In the sense that I’m not being FULLY literally
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That’s rather unfair to genuinely illiterate people, don’t you think? After all, an unwillingness to read is not at all the same as an inability to read.
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They didn’t say anything which could be addressed by what you said, even though what you said in the second sentence is true.
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My response was supposed to be directed at the first AC, but for some reason, it showed up in response to Strawb even though I definitely clicked the correct reply button.
"hollow grift in the golden age of corruption"
Now, there’s an unambiguously American value!
I would choose an exploding pager over a Trump phone.
10 days in Whitehouse, times 24 hrs in a day comes to 240hrs. I dont know the actual time of day he was hired and fired so I’ll be generous here. So at most, the lie by trump lasted 2.4 hrs.
I thought it would be shorter given the track record.
I don't see the problem.
If you have bothered following this administration, that resort would be entirely within its normal operational constraints. ICE would just demand lists of suitable grad students to kidnap from U.S. universities and have them work in suitably equipped labor camps.
Nothing that this administration would be ashamed of.
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I’d love to drone drop OSS simple sabotage manuals behind the wire.
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The second they do that, I’m canceling my preorder. I don’t care if it is Trump’s phone, I’m not buying anything made by DEI foreigners.
'And it keeps tigers away too!'
This is really all just lazy performance art for very dim people.
To be fair when you know your target audience is ‘make a concussed five-year old look brilliant’-level stupid why wouldn’t you half-ass your lies? It’s not like you need to put any real work in, just say whatever idiocy it takes to manipulate them and rake in the cash/power.
Re: Now don't knock concussed five-year olds
Every doctor will tell you that.
Well, if it’s made in US, but have foreign parents, will it be sent back to parents country? I’m talking for confused ICE agents.
Escobar Phone 2.0: corruption boogaloo
Friend of mine has seen the phone.
Its a $75 bottom-of-the-range generic 60hz 1080p android device that only supports upto android 15 and no further.
10mp camera, 65-128GB storage maximum
And all slapped with a cheapo “gold” paint that flakes off even under carefuly use.
I’ve heard that they are actually gold spray painted tin cans with the word Trump in glossy black and come with a very long piece of string tied in a knot at one end in the bottom of your “mobile”. All you have to do is find someone using the same technological marvel and tie your string into theirs and then you can talk all you like until it rains and dissolves the string, or it breaks.
Gold or not, if it doesn’t have Putin’s private number on speed dial, it CAN’T be a Trump phone.
The dumbest thing to me is dropping RAM stats. RAM is dirt cheap at the moment.
If it was me trying to scam the American public with shoddy merchandise, I would drop CPU and/or SDD stats, in favor of talking up how much RAM the thing has. But, of course, Trump is as much a mark for his “allies” like Stephen Miller as Trump’s own followers are for him.
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The physical RAM size probably didn’t change, but the malware has to go somewhere.
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Trump voters have always had limited memory… otherwise they wouldn’t have elected this idiot not once but twice.
Sure it costs US $500, but at that price I presume it’s automated enough to cook the books to make the cost appear as “legal expenses” in New York State?