In the months leading up to Election Day 2024, when Donald Trump was ostensibly focused on his candidacy, the Republican launched a dizzying merchandising campaign, pitching everything from Trump-branded watches to silver Trump commemorative coins, batches of digital trading cards to a weird cryptocurrency project and gold sneakers to Trump-endorsed Bibles.
Even after the president returned to power, the efforts continued with, among other things, Trump-branded guitars. Many of these have proved quite lucrative for him, according to the Republican’s 2025 financial disclosure.
So no one was especially surprised in June when the Trump Organization announced the launch of a wireless phone service that would carry the president’s name — marketed to those Donald Trump Jr. described as “real Americans” — and sell a gold-colored $499 phone, dubbed the T1.
At the rollout, the public was told to expect everything to be in place by the end of the year. As November nears its end, what happened? NBC News reported:
NBC News placed an order for a T1 phone in August, paying the $100 deposit for the purposes of tracking the $499 phone’s development. After confirming with the credit card company that the transaction was not fraudulent, NBC News received a confirmation email verifying the order. But the company provided no proactive updates after the order. NBC News made five separate phone calls to the Trump Mobile customer support line between September and November.
In October, NBC News was told to expect a Nov. 13 ship date. When that date came and went, an operator at the call center said to expect delivery in the “beginning of December.” (The same operator blamed delays on the government shutdown, which didn’t appear to make any sense.)
Making matters worse, the Trump Mobile website has gone through a series of edits, including the elimination of release dates and “Made in the USA” assurances.
The setbacks are not altogether surprising. Almost immediately after the launch, the president declared, “I don’t believe in telephones,” which wasn’t much of a sales pitch. Around the same time, a variety of reports suggested customers were struggling to place orders.
Even the coverage map had to be pulled — not because it was wrong, but because it referenced the Gulf of Mexico, and that name for that body of water apparently bothers the White House.
Five months later, those who predicted that this gambit wouldn’t work out well for anyone appear to have been correct.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
