A grift? From Trump? How could we possibly have gotten here?
Nearly 600,000 Trump supporters paid £74 ($100) each towards a gold smartphone that, nearly a year on, does not exist.
The Trump Mobile T1 phone was announced in June 2025 by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as a patriotic alternative to Apple and Samsung, retailing at £370 ($499) and promising a ‘Made in the USA’ build.
An estimated 590,000 buyers paid a £74 ($100) deposit to secure one, collectively handing the venture roughly £43.7 million ($59 million). As of May 2026, not a single confirmed customer has received the device. Now, a fresh wave of anger is spreading across MAGA forums after buyers received communication making clear that their money is, for all practical purposes, gone.
American population: about 400 million. Cost of the war in Iran: about 20 billion per day. 20 billion divided by 400 million: about 50 dollars a day.
Every single person in America spent the equivalent of this Trump phone in ten days of this war that has lasted more than six times as long. How the man is still America’s President, I don’t know. But the saga of the $500 cult vaporphone sure explains a lot.