Here’s to the Trumps for realizing that for them, there’s no truth to, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” which we can’t quite attribute to P.T. Barnum and/or W.C. Fields.
No, the Trumps face the opposite reality: The MAGA pool is large but limited, and natural causes dwindle its numbers a little more each day. Apparently half of them are retired. In short, death or GOP-inflicted elderly insolvency is on the horizon for many of them. The Trumps need to grift while the grifting is good.
Along those lines, the Trump phone (“T1”) popped back onto the radar last week. It went on sale last summer, $499 total and asking for $100 up front. So far, around 590,000 patriots suckers customers have reportedly plunked down their Benjamin for the privilege of owning, well, nothing so far.
The project made news last week for contradictory new images of the phone that hit social media. A quick overview of the claims surrounding the T1:
It looks just like this phone over here.
Yet simultaneously, it looks just like that other different phone.
It’s Made In America!
Wellllll, it’s mostly made in “a favored nation” and finished, like so many Trump voters, in Florida.
It’ll be out in August 2025.
It’ll be out in March 2026.
It’ll be out … when it’s out.
The Telltale Drop
Of course, a Trump family con is hardly a new concept. A simple cash grab trading on the Trump name means it’s barely a drop in the greater bucket of moral Trump malfeasance. It would hardly merit a post, in fact, if it weren’t such an archetypical enterprise. In the White House or elsewhere, this is a classic riff on the small, mean playbook.
Lie to entice the gullible and wishful.
Take the money, if at all possible.
Move the goalposts.
Issue conflicting information.
Stall.
Bluff.
Bullshit through complications that wouldn’t have arisen if you’d known what you were doing in the first place.
Repeat as necessary.
And never, ever give the money back.
I don’t know which is more likely to happen next — finding out it was made with child labor, finding out they’ve stiffed their vendors (again), or hearing that the project’s ever-growing issues are Joe Biden’s fault.
Do I think a Trump phone will eventually come out? Yeah, I think it probably will. But even if they decided to scrap the whole thing and return all those sucker-spent $100 deposits, they wouldn’t be returning the over $2 million in interest that they would’ve made over the course of a year by just parking that money in a decent savings account.
Either way, that $2 million gets pocketed. If we’re lucky, it’s easier money than suing the government you’re running for $10 billion and then negotiating a resolution with yourself at taxpayer expense, but easy money nonetheless.
p.s. Some of you may recognize the post title as a variation on Robert Earl Keen’s song. In his song, the guy rescues a woman from a tough situation. They set out on some unsavory business. But eventually, trouble closes in. The guy winds up in jail, and the woman winds up with a boatload of money. Sounds like a good-enough, optimistic thought to close with, doesn’t it?