The story of the Trump Mobile phone seems a microcosm of the Trump administration.

On June 16, 2025, President Trump’s two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. And Eric Trump, announced the launch of Trump Mobile. The new venture’s flagship product was “a sleek, gold smartphone engineered for performance“ called the T1 Phone.

As Judd Legum of Popular Information explains, on June 16, 2025, Trump’s sons Donald Jr. And Eric announced the launch of a new, gold plated, Trump smartphone, “proudly designed and built in the United States.” It would be available in August 2025 for $499. Its website urged customers to “pre-order” the phone by depositing $100 toward it. Don Jr. Said the phone would be “American hardware, built in America, without the potential of…[a] backdoor into the hardware that some of our adversaries have installed in there.”

And yet a disclaimer on the website said the Trumps and the Trump Organization were involved only in the branding of the phone ; they had nothing to do with the design, development, manufacture, distribution, or sales of the item. As Legum notes, the idea of a superior U.S.-made phone was always a fantasy, and within two weeks the phone’s description changed from “MADE IN THE USA” to “designed with American values in mind.”

The phone never shipped, and on April 6, Trump Mobile updated its terms to say the $100 deposit was not actually a deposit for a pre-order, but rather “a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects, in its sole discretion, to offer the Device for sale.” It went on to say the deposit “does not lock in pricing, promotions, service plans, taxes, fees, shipping costs, or other commercial terms” and that “[e]stimated ship dates, launch timelines, or anticipated production schedule are non-binding estimates only.”

A new phone has recently gotten clearance from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Trump Mobile executives say they are waiting for approval from T-Mobile, the company whose network Trump Mobile wants to use. Legum points out that T-Mobile relies on the federal government for approval for business activities, creating an enormous conflict of interest.

President Donald Trump has always ridden to power by projecting an image of dominance. He could maintain that image, thanks to the people who covered for him : his father, Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, and in his first presidential term—as Sidney Blumenthal reminded readers in The Guardian today—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who filtered the options Trump received ; chief of staff General John Kelly, who made a pact with Mattis that one of them would always stay in the country to stand in the way of Trump’s impulses ; and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, who stopped Trump from signing disastrous executive orders, sometimes going so far as to steal them off his desk.

In Trump’s second term, though, those people who curbed his worst impulses have been replaced with yes-men, and there is no one to protect him from the fallout.

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump took to social media to complain bitterly about the demise of his tariffs, about Iran, and about political opponents ; to boast about his changes to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and about the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) mixed martial arts event he plans to host in front of the White House on his 80th birthday; and to try, once again, to project dominance.

President Donald Trump complained twice that in its decision declaring his “Liberation Day” tariffs of April 2025 unconstitutional, the Supreme Court had not included a sentence saying, “Any money paid to the United States of America does not have to be paid back.” That sentence, he insisted, “would have saved America 159 billion Dollars !” He complained about his Supreme Court appointees Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett and suggested he should “PACK THE COURT ! I’m working so hard to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and then people that I appointed have shown so little respect to our Country, and its people. What is the reason for this ? They have to do the right thing, but it’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them to ‘almost’ the highest position in the land, that is, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.”

Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post noted last week that, apparently determined to convince Americans all is going well, President Donald Trump is putting words in our mouths. Around Washington, D.C., signs are appearing that show President Donald Trump in a hard hat near construction scaffolding and read : “Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP.”