The Trump Cellphone Is Nonetheless (Checks Notes) a Deflating Vortex of BS

Effectively, people. Right here we’re once more. Within the seemingly unending ladder to nowhere that’s the Trump phone saga, there’s yet another dubiously crafted rung alongside the best way—and this one has a quantity hooked up! Yay for numbers; they deserve a downgrade in dignity, too.

The aforementioned quantity in query has to do with preorders of the T1, Trump Cellular’s alleged gold-colored cellphone that has nonetheless not shipped regardless of being eligible for a $100 deposit since June. As famous by The Verge, the alleged cellphone now has an excellent bigger alleged preorder determine that implies almost 600,000 alleged folks have allegedly spent cash on this dubious-at-best system.

That’d be a harrowing piece of knowledge, however as you might have guessed from the quantity of dramatic “allegeds” I put within the prior sentence, there’s actually no strategy to affirm the veracity of that quantity or the place it got here from. It seems the official cellphone of “pretend information” acolytes may very well be the topic of a pretend determine. Who’d have thunk it?

As The Verge notes in its personal rabbit gap dive into the determine, the very best guess on its origin is… a social media publish—particularly a Facebook post from December. That publish, as posts typically do, has since been amplified a number of occasions over by X’s Grok AI and even by the press office for Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California. A narrative as outdated as time—or no less than as outdated as social media.

The actual fact is, we nonetheless haven’t any actual, respected knowledge on how many individuals, if any, have truly spent cash on the T1, similar to we’ve no actual, tangible proof of the cellphone’s existence. The timing of this unverifiable determine certain is one thing, although. Simply this week, Democratic lawmakers have urged the FTC to look into the “bait-and-switch techniques” of Trump Cellular, particularly round its now-reneged promise of creating the T1 cellphone within the U.S. In case you missed it, an American-made cellphone of the T1’s description is actually, like… not even possible.

So, right here we’re, swimming in much more potential bulls**t surrounding a tool that additionally reeks equally of the stuff. As if pivoting to promoting refurbished iPhones and Samsung Galaxies wasn’t sufficient, now we’ve to wade by probably made-up preorder figures. I’d like off this journey, please.

As for the FTC inquiry into the Trump cellphone, I’m pretty sure that we will relaxation assured that it’ll go nowhere. If there’s one factor I’ve come to find out about requirements over this carnie-operated rollercoaster of a decade, it’s that I ought to, the truth is, not count on any in any respect.