The Trump family scamming the president's admirers out of a hundred bucks each stands out to even a jaded chronicler of their corruption.
More than a half million people paid a $100 “deposit” to preorder a gold smartphone announced in June 2025 by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, but those Trump Mobile devices appear unlikely to hit the market – and The Bulwark's Andrew Egger cautioned customers against holding their breath for a refund.
"Nearly a year on, though, the whole thing is starting to look like — stop us if you’ve heard this one — a scam," Egger wrote.
The company quietly changed its terms of service last month to state plainly there was "No Guarantee of Release, Delivery or Timing," and its website indicated the phone might never be released.
"That’s right, MAGA Patriot!" Egger wrote. "You might have thought, when you sent the president’s sons your hard-earned $100, that you were preordering a phone that they’d soon be sending you — since that’s how preorders work and what they led you to believe. But that’s just because you don’t know business."
"In reality, what you were ordering was just a conditional opportunity to buy a Trump phone later, should they ever get around to making them, which to be clear they are in no way promising that they’ll ever do," he added.
Egger wondered why this particular swindle bothered him so much in comparison to other Trump corruption scheme.
"This is hardly the first time Trump and his family have cashed in on his cult of personality to part his superfans from their cash," Egger wrote. "Indeed, for many MAGA superfans, being endlessly shaken down for cash via a blizzard of unbelievably sleazy campaign-solicitation texts and emails has become a defining feature of their digital lives. And that’s to say nothing of Trump’s crypto projects, Trump’s NFTs, Trump’s guitars, Trump’s sneakers, Trump’s watches — I could go on."
Trump entered politics on the promise that he would stand up for the "forgotten man," and that's been an enduring part of his appeal to his MAGA base, but in reality both of his terms have served to benefit himself and his family – and their billionaire backers.
"Maybe it’s the ludicrousness of his gang continuing to run these two-bit scams at all," egger wrote. "Scalping $100 a head from hundreds of thousands of people who are enthused by Trump Mobile’s pitch that 'Trump will proudly be displayed in the status bar as your network' isn’t bad money if you can get it, but it’s chump change compared to the bigger self-dealing projects Trump is running these days."
"At least when Arab sheikhs and oil barons choose to pour billions into the Trump family’s pockets, they’re doing it with their eyes wide open: It’s simple corruption to buy more favorable presidential treatment for their nations, and no one can deny they’ve been getting what they paid for," he added. "These Trump Mobile saps, by contrast, just want a new phone — and they’re not even getting that."
