Why We’re Going To Keep Talking About The Trump Phone

For nan past mates of weeks, I’ve been asking — many times — where nan promised Trump telephone is, whether it exists, and what happened to each nan money group person already paid for deposits. And I’m going to support doing that each week for nan foreseeable future. 

Not everyone thinks I should. I’ve been told that covering Trump Mobile is “playing into his hands,” that “this evident con [doesn’t need] immoderate much publicity,” and that “we don’t request to publication astir it virtually each week.” And those are conscionable nan bully messages — you don’t want to spot immoderate of nan different ones.

Still, I deliberation it’s a adjacent question. Why am I present week in, week out, penning astir a telephone that, arsenic champion arsenic we tin tell, doesn’t really exist? Why didn’t we conscionable call it bad and impossible and move connected pinch our lives?

The short reply is: because it matters.

The agelong reply is: We can’t move connected because this is still playing out, and it still needs reporting. If nan T1 Phone 8002 would conscionable get astatine buyers’ houses and move retired to beryllium a real, astir apt rather bad, smartphone, that would beryllium that. But nary 1 has nan telephone yet. No 1 has moreover seen nan telephone yet. And Trump Mobile has gone suspiciously silent, pinch nary updates successful months to its website aliases societal media profiles.

This besides sits squarely successful The Verge’s lane. You want america to instrumentality to phones? This is it! It’s a telephone — astatine slightest successful sanction — and we want to cognize what’s going connected pinch it.

In fact, it sits successful nan oculus of a cleanable large wind of Verge-iness. It’s a phone, and we screen those. It’s astir apt vaporware, and we’re ever happy to telephone retired products that will ne'er really exist. It creates a beautiful clear regulatory problem for nan FCC, and we emotion pointing opportunities for Brendan Carr to beryllium a dummy. And, yes, it’s astir authorities — The Verge covers that. Always has, ever will.

But much than that, it’s thing that’s worthy calling out, and calling retired often. In nan expansive strategy of nan Donald Trump administration, a golden Android telephone that won’t really beryllium made successful nan US is beautiful mini fry. But it’s emblematic of quiet promises and naked grifts, of baseless claims that they don’t expect to ever beryllium called retired on. This is an management presiding complete 1 of nan biggest tech manufacture booms (bubbles?) successful decades, that had a tech bro arsenic 1 of its main advisers, and that welcomed half of Silicon Valley astatine nan inauguration, and it doesn’t cognize that you can’t build $500 Android flagships successful nan United States?

Trump Mobile, for nan 3rd week successful a row, did not respond to a petition for comment.