Outside the Beltway

The Grift is Endless

Trump Mobile!

Steven L. Taylor
25

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Via The Verge: Trump Mobile launches $47 service and a gold phone.

The Trump family is launching a mobile network, Trump Mobile, and a Trump-branded phone, the T1, which they claim will be made in America.

Trump Mobile is launching with a single plan called “The 47 Plan” for $47.45 per month, which it says offers the same coverage as the big three carriers. It will work with existing phones, but if you prefer, the company will also sell a $499 T1 Phone in a gold finish.

Here’s the press release and the website.

The Verge‘s write-up notes some errors and omissions in the information provided about the service, e.g, ” the boast of a “5000mAh long life camera,” when it presumably means the battery.”

We all know that this is a business plan pitched entirely at fleecing hard-core MAGAites. It is yet another extension of Trump’s long-term business strategy of slapping his name on products and hoping to cash in until they run out of rubes. And we know from Trump Steaks, Trump Wins, Trump Vodka, and Trump University that the quality of the product will be poor.

A more proximate example is the Trump Bible and various Trump NFTs and crypto.

It is truly frustrating and sad to watch this man use the presidency to enrich himself. It would be bad enough if that was all he was doing, but you throw in all the damage he is doing and it makes it all the worse.

Elected Republicans, at this point, are fully complicit in this corruption.

I am reminded of the uproar about “Obamaphones” back in the day, which was, IIRC, a nickname given, often in derision, to a program to help financially strapped Americans get access to a cell phone, which has become a central technology in our lives. Rightwing commentators often asserted that Obama was using “Obamaphones” to buy votes.

It is an interesting contrast: the Trump Organization is blatantly using the presidency as a marketing device to make money, and this will be fine with many (most?) on the right. But providing subsidized access to a piece of technology that has become central to modern life? That’s the real corruption.

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25 responses to “The Grift is Endless”

  1. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    I’d lay odds of a trillion to one the thing is at best assembled in America, not made there.

    9
  2. ~Chris Avatar
    ~Chris

    Seems like something Jefferson Davis “Boss” Hogg would do.

    3
  3. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    Why, it’s a…magaphone.

    13
  4. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    There is, or not a Pablo Escobar branded phone

    1
  5. gVOR10 Avatar
    gVOR10

    The “Obabaphone” started as a landline program under Reagan and was expanded to cell phones under W. Republicans are so gullible.

    10
  6. Eusebio Avatar
    Eusebio

    @Kathy: “I’d lay odds of a trillion to one the thing is at best assembled in America, not made there.”

    Normally I’d take trillion-to-one odds on anything. But not this.

  7. steve Avatar
    steve

    Makes me miss the old days when POTUS candidates accepted money for charities where at least most of that money did some good. Or waited until they were out of office to make a few million in speaking fees. Or loaned a few thousand dollars to a family so they could buy a car or something that was somehow shady.

    Steve

    6
  8. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @Eusebio:

    Would you take a trillion trillion to one?

  9. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @Kathy: @Eusebio:

    Hey, Eric Trump told Ben Shapiro today that “eventually” the phones would be made in the U.S.A.

    4
  10. inhumans99 Avatar
    inhumans99

    Is this a real thing, or just another announcement of a Trump branded doodad that may never really see a wide-release?

    Honestly, branded phones feels so early 2000s as folks like Amazon, and Facebook had their moment in the sun in which they thought look at me, look at me, we have tons of money and can create our own phone and ecosystem that our customers will love to use, but obviously, it was a big fail and a massive write-off for Amazon and Facebook/Meta and I believe they moved on and never tried that again.

    There was also that really expensive phone that folks with more money than sense could buy that had a dedicated concierge button and some other features that stood out if money was no object for you, and that also came and went (I think the brand name started with a V). It feels like Trump is trying his hand at this type of device but we already know how that story ends.

    In this case it is not my simply saying what everyone else does, that everything President Trump touches dies/turns to dung, it is that every attempt prior to this one has failed for the person attempting it…and it did not matter that FB and Amazon, two giants with more money than God attempted this, it is just an inevitable failure for anyone who tries to pretty much horn in on Apple, Samsung, and even Google’s (Pixel user here) action will be destined to a pretty quick failure.

    However, in the short term President Trump gets to fleece his flock and feel good for the five minutes that his branded phone stays relevant in the market, so I guess he sees this as a win.

    He needs a win, since the big story this weekend was not his glorious military parade but the political assasinations and the peaceful No King’s Day protests, it took the spotlight of off him.

    For a brief period some hooligans in Los Angeles played right into his hands by acting up and giving him an excuse to act good on his past threat to send the military in to quell protests, but even that has fizzled out as most folks in Los Angeles wised up and decided not to feed the narrative that everyone in Los Angeles is ready to run riot and even the politicians tamped things down with a curfew for a tiny part of Los Angeles that really did not interrupt life all that much for those directly inside or near the curfew zone, and this curfew did not cause even more folks to push back and lash out against the “man,” so yeah…Trump needs to keep coming up with outlandish actions that are all but guaranteed to get the spotlight back on him, even if only for another 5 minutes of time.

    3
  11. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    Cellular is one of my focus industries in my business, and I know cellular plans and terms well.

    Looking at the terms-of-service, this is one of the worst plans I’ve seen.

    I can’t find which phone they are selling exactly, but if it really only supports Android 15 and not 16, then it’s probably trash.

    6
  12. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    It’s hilarious.
    Sell the phones, make bit on that, get the purchasers to sign up to “Trump network”, sell the entire subsription book off to a service provider, probably with some nasties in the small print about user data and charges etc.
    Sit back and count the cash.

    4
  13. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @Andy:

    Yes, it’s Android 15. And of course it’s a piece of way overpriced crap.

    3
  14. Tony W Avatar
    Tony W

    I give T-Mobile until the end of the day to file a huge lawsuit against this.

    2
  15. Scott F. Avatar
    Scott F.

    Elected Republicans, at this point, are fully complicit in this corruption.

    Complicit, yes. Accountable, no.

    In a society that took an informed citizenry seriously, “Why are you okay with ____ ? [Insert latest Trump grift]” would be the opening question of every interview with Speaker Johnson or Majority Leader Thune every day. And the interview would end if they tried to weasel out of answering.

    6
  16. Scott F. Avatar
    Scott F.

    @Andy: The target consumer won’t be buying a cellular plan, they will be buying “good standing” in the cult. The $47.45 is the tell. (47th & 45th POTUS – get it? How rich! Trump really understands me.)

    2
  17. JiveTurkin Avatar
    JiveTurkin

    Hey, we wanted transparency, that’s what we got. It’s all out in the open. Besides, the customers they get are asking to be fleeced.

    3
  18. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Andy: It will 100% be a crap phone. How could it be otherwise?

  19. al Ameda Avatar
    al Ameda

    Trump Mobile is launching with a single plan called “The 47 Plan” for $47.45 per month, which it says offers the same coverage as the big three carriers. It will work with existing phones, but if you prefer, the company will also sell a $499 T1 Phone in a gold finish.

    A couple of points:
    (1) Over at Apple, Tim Cook clearly dodged a bullet.
    He’s so lucky that Trump didn’t ask (force) him to market and sell this T1 phone.
    (2) Again, this fetish with a fake gold finish. So ‘Scarface’

    6
  20. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @al Ameda: How do we know that Tim Cook didn’t just refuse or set the price point too high?

    2
  21. al Ameda Avatar
    al Ameda

    @just nutha:

    How do we know that Tim Cook didn’t just refuse or set the price point too high?

    You’re right, we don’t know about either possibility.
    However, given the manner in which all these high-end tech guys caved so rapidly and anschlussed-up with Trump, I can’t imagine Tim Cook refusing.

    4
  22. Scott O Avatar
    Scott O

    When I read the sub headline my first thought was a car. Like the Batmobile. Maybe a gold plated Cybertruck with some extra gee gaws. A furry roof and an air horn.

    1
  23. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @inhumans99:

    It’s probably real, but not an attempt to make their own hardware, OS, and app ecosystem like the Amazon Fire phone. More like limited edition phones or themed phones, like these. They’re built by someone else and tacky-ied down for people with deplorable tastes.

    Nor do they set up a mobile data network. Rather they’re a virtual network operator. Basically they pay for use of an established network, and resell that to their customers. There are a lot of such virtual networks out there, all accessible with a SIM chip.

    So, rebranded generic phone on a rebranded generic network.

    2
  24. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    At 16:52 in this video you may find what inspired El Taco’s phone.

    TL;DR: it’s a flagship Samsung phone with a 1 kilo brick of gold stuck to the back. The video, from April 2021, claims it sells for $170,000.

    1
  25. Daniel Hill Avatar
    Daniel Hill

    @Kathy: Assembly is the labor intensive part. No way it happens in the good old US of A.

    1

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