The phone’s new terms of service says a pre-order “does not guarantee that a device will be produced or made available for purchase.”

May 11, 2026

Companies bearing the name “Trump” and extremely blatant fraud allegations: Name a more iconic duo. There’s a reason why the online left has gotten such long, perennial use out of its “fell for it again award” memes–no matter how many times the average MAGA consumer ends up getting burned by some Trump-adjacent product that turns out to be a scam, it never seems to stop them from enthusiastically clamoring for another chance to fork over hundreds or thousands of dollars to the next identical scam. Hell, most of the time, even after being scammed, they won’t even leave a negative review or complain! It does beg the question: If no company is ever held accountable for scamming the MAGA customer demographic, then why would any of those companies ever deliver the products they’re claiming to manufacture? After all, simply collecting digital transactions is a whole lot simpler than say, designing a new smartphone, and shipping said “Trump Phone” to hundreds of thousands of people. Between having to do that, and simply collecting $59 million, I’d choose the latter as well!

The so-called Trump Phone has already been a saga of epic proportions, so here’s a quick recap: The phone in question, official name Trump Mobile T1 phone, was initially announced in June 2025 by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who spearheaded its supposed development. It was pitched as a MAGA-friendly alternative to the liberal-coded likes of Apple or Samsung, boasting it would be an Android device “Made in the USA” and would retail for $500, with monthly fees of $47.45. It was of course designed to be gold-colored from top to bottom–what else could it have been, while bearing the name of the guy who just got a huge golden idol of himself dedicated by evangelical pastors in Florida? The company in question, “Trump Mobile,” is part of the Trump Organization, the President’s own company that he refused to divest himself of when taking office in defiance of all previous precedent of a President’s financial entanglements and conflicts of interest. The actual phone service is operated by “T1 Mobile LLC,” registered in Florida in April of 2025, by unclear administrators, although Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have been the public face of the company. When it launched, delivery of the phone was promised for the summer of 2025. All told, an estimated 590,000 preorders of $100 were placed by customers, to the tune of $59 million in revenue.

Suffice to say, every promise related to the Trump Phone immediately began to be walked back in short order. Delivery dates were pushed to Nov. 2025, and then to December, and then to “first quarter” of 2026. In March of this year, the phone was meant to meet a T-Mobile carrier certification deadline, which also whizzed by with no news. Customer service representatives contacted by users reportedly blamed delays earlier this year on the shutdown of the federal government, despite it having nothing to do with the operations of a private electronics company. And in April, Trump Mobile redesigned its website and quietly removed any reference to a release date entirely. Things are clearly trending in the right direction here.

Would you believe that the “made in the USA” conversation has followed a similar arc at the same time? This was half of the initial selling point of the Trump Phone, that it would be manufactured in America, but days after its initial launch and presales, the words “made in the USA” disappeared from the Trump Mobile website. They were replaced by meaningless blather like “American-proud design” and “brought to life right here in the USA,” terminology with no legal meaning. By early 2026, Trump Mobile representatives were clarifying that “final assembly” of some components would take place in Miami, while the majority of production and assembly would happening … somewhere else. Shocker. In response, prominent Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) were left to beg the FTC to do its job and investigate a company engaged in a shameless bait and switch.

Now in May of 2026, we’ve finally reached the stage where Trump Mobile seems to be mulling its exit and the deployment of a golden parachute. No phones have shipped to any users, and as far as I can tell, not even a working mockup has ever actually been previewed by tech writers or MAGA influencers. Meanwhile, an April update to the T1 phone’s terms and conditions seemed to discreetly insert new language that implies the phones will not only not be delivered, but will never even exist.

Specifically, the terms of service now say that merely making a deposit toward a Trump Phone: “is not a purchase, does not constitute acceptance of an order, does not create a contract for sale, does not transfer ownership or title interest, does not allocate or reserve specific inventory, and does not guarantee that a device will be produced or made available for purchase.” It likewise claims that the payment made by the customer “provides only a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects, in its sole discretion, to offer the device for sale.”

You’ve got to love the inclusion of “does not guarantee that a device will be produced” in particular, implying that even now, almost a year after they accepted $59 million in customer pre-orders, the phone in question can not be said to have been “produced.”

So … refunds? Well sure, maybe, or maybe not. Conflicting reporting has suggested that some MAGA customers have already had their requests for refunds turned down, while other tech reporters who ordered the phone have reported other discrepancies, such as recurring monthly service charges despite the fact that the phones aren’t actually in service. Anyone who needs to hear this would surely either already understand it or be immune to the warning, but here it is anyway: It’s probably a bad idea for any company with “Trump” in the name to have access to your credit card information, or the ability to charge you, if you want to keep your money where it currently is.

Thing is, even if Trump Mobile were forced to eventually give refunds to anyone who requested them, they’d still ultimately make out like bandits at the end of the day. They know what any grifter on the far-right understands, which is that tribalism is more important to their marks than their own financial wellbeing. Even if you give this demographic the opportunity to recoup their money via refunds, a huge chunk of the user base will simply elect to never request their money back, even when the company confirms it has no intent to ever deliver the product. I’ve already watched this same dynamic play out in this space countless times before: You can sell the MAGA consumer cases of outrageously expensive, liberal-mocking bourbon or beer, never deliver the product, and have that same consumer write a positive review about the product they paid for and never received, a year later, because the alternative would be admitting that they got suckered yet again. And for a lot of these consumers, that’s simply not an option.

Has a more fruitful atmosphere for fraud ever existed, in human history? Why the hell am I doing this for a living, when I could be pretending to sell whiskey or phones?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-scammed-another-59-million-115347079.html