"Can You Fear Me Now?"

 

A little humor adding to the absurdity of the Trump Mobile Phone scam:

 

(h/t Just An Earth- bound Misfit, via Red State Blues)

Update On That "Bad And Impossible" Trump Mobile Phone

 

When it comes to the Trump Crime Family, why would anyone have suspected a scam?  Oh, right --

President Trump’s company on Monday announced the launch of a new 5G wireless service, along with a $499 Android phone — which it said is “proudly designed and built in the United States.”

But the “sleek,” gold-colored T1 Phone, which is supposed to be available starting in September, is almost surely being manufactured in China, given its price point and specifications, according to tech experts. The Trump Mobile T1 Phone is listed as having a 6.8-inch AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) screen with a 120-Hz refresh rate. 

“Despite being advertised as an American-made phone, it is likely that this device will be initially produced by a Chinese [original design manufacturer],” Counterpoint Research analyst Blake Przesmicki wrote in a June 16 note.

In an interview with CNBC, Nilay Patel, editor in chief of tech news site The Verge, said, “I don’t think [Trump Mobile is] going to sell a phone that has anything to do with the United States on any kind of timeline that makes sense.” He said that the only phone that could be available for $499 by September would be “undoubtedly a rebranded Chinese Android phone.”

Max Weinbach, an analyst at research firm Creative Strategies, in a post on X, said the T1 Phone is likely being made by Wingtech, which is owned by Chinese company Luxshare. “Same device as the T-Mobile REVVL 7 Pro 5G, custom body,” Weinbach wrote in the post. “Wingtech, now owned by Luxshare, makes it in Jiaxing, Wuxi, or Kunming China.”...

They'll pocket $100 from MAGA rubes reserving the Chinese knockoff right off the bat.  Don't expect anyone to get refunds if things go bad. Sad!

(Image:  Trump Mobile)

The Trump Mobile Wireless Phone "Looks Both Bad And Impossible"

 

David Pierce, editor-at-large of The Verge, has some thoughts on the latest scam coming out of the Trump Crime Family (h/t Mock Paper Scissors):

Here is a roughly complete list of all the things we know for sure about the first phone made for the new Trump Mobile wireless provider: it’s called the T1 Phone 8002 (gold version). It costs $499, and you can reserve one now with a $100 down payment. It is, according to the website, coming in September.

That’s about all I feel confident saying. Beyond that, all we have is a website that was clearly put together quickly and somewhat sloppily, a promise that the phone is “designed and built in the USA” that I absolutely do not believe, a picture that appears to be nearly 100 percent Photoshopped, and a list of specs that don’t make a lot of sense together. The existence of a “gold version” of the phone implies a not-gold version, but the Trump Mobile website doesn’t say anything more about that.  (our emphasis)

Pierce then discusses the incongruous (if not impossible) features of the phone, concluding:

All that aside, though, there are still a thousand things we don’t know about the T1. Starting with, what does it actually look like? Will it be waterproof or durable in any way? Why are the corners of the case so off-color? Why are the three rear cameras so weirdly spaced apart? Why does the top of the phone in the render look more like an iPhone than an Android device? Is it actually going to come with a Trump Mobile background, and will people be able to change it? What kind of heinous bloatware / spyware / crypto scams are going to come built into this thing? If this is the T1 model 8002, what happened to the first 8,001 tries? If it’s coming in September, does that mean Trump is going to try and upstage this year’s iPhone announcement in some way? Why would anyone pay for this thing, just for the privilege of spending too much money on repackaged T-Mobile service?

It seems utterly unfathomable that you could build a phone with this set of specs, at this price, to be delivered in September. Either Trump Mobile has done something truly remarkable here (and I’d bet you a T1 Phone 8002 that it hasn’t), or the phone it ends up shipping will not be the one buyers are expecting. Like we always say here at The Verge, it’s vaporware until it ships. And the Trump Mobile T1 Phone 8002 is as vapor-y as it gets.  (our emphasis)

This is probably one of the more run-of-the-mill scams put together by the Trump Crime Family.  Certainly, the tens of millions of dollars (that we know of) coming in from the utterly corrupt Malignant Fascist's various crypto deals, foreign government pay-to-play bribes, various corporate shakedowns, etc., dwarf the latest scam, at least in monetary value, for now.   But the fact that this has now become the norm, as has incendiary political speech and violence, is what happens when you lose the guardrails, checks and balances, and institutions that are the last bulwarks of democracy. 

(Image:  Bad and Impossible / Trump Mobile)