‘Trump Phone’ Sees Price Hike, But Still No Release Date (Or Actual Phone)

from the sucker-born-every-minute dept

Last year the fraud-prone Trump organization announced a half-assed wireless phone company. As we noted at the time, calling this a “phone company” was generous; it was a lazy marketing rebrand of another, half-assed, “MAGA-focused” mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) named Patriot Mobile, which itself just resold T-Mobile service. So basically just another lazy Trump brand partnership.

The centerpiece of this effort was supposed to be a “bold” new $500 Trump T1 smartphone that the Trump org claimed would be “proudly designed and built in the United States” and released sometime last August. Not only was the device never going to be made in the States (all mention of that was quickly stripped from press materials), the August launch date came and went with no Trump phone.

It’s now April of 2026, and while there’s still no phone (despite a long line of rubes having plunked down $100 deposits), there is a revamped Trump Mobile website and a renewed promise of a slightly different phone, according to The Verge. This includes a revamped and gaudy new mock up of what the gold Trump T1 phone is supposed to look like, should it ever actually be released:

You’ll notice that the phone looks suspiciously like the HTC U24 Pro, a phone released two years ago and available for as little as $460 on Amazon (even less on places like eBay):

While the original “Trump phone” was announced with a $500 price tag, the backers of Trump’s latest grift insist that price was “promotional,” and the full price tag will be closer to around $1000:

“The phone is now listed with a “promotional price” of $499, which used to simply be its standard price. The site is still accepting $100 deposits, with the promise that you can “lock in” the “promotional pricing.” When I spoke to executives Eric Thomas and Don Hendrickson in February, they declared that $499 had been an “introductory” price, which would be rising after the relaunch — though they promised that early buyers would still be charged $499 total, and that the new price would be “less than $1,000.”

So there’s no phone or release date, but there’s already been a price hike on a lazy rebrand of an existing phone they just needed to spray paint gold and slap a Trump logo on. There’s simply no reason that doing this very basic rebrand should have taken so long (assuming they do plan to eventually released a phone), but as a concept the whole thing remains very on brand.

Filed Under: branding, con, donald trump, mvno, smartphone, trump phone, wireless

Companies: trump mobile