Welp, if you were planning to retire your Obama-era flip phone for a gold Trump Tower-inspired upgrade… you’re going to be waiting a while.

(Source: Mashable)

To start 2026 strong, Trump Mobile has officially delayed the launch of its gold-colored “T1” smartphone… the one that was supposed to be built in America, cost $499, and somehow go toe-to-toe with Apple and Samsung. Spoiler: it did none of that.

Customer service (which is never a good messenger) blamed the delay on the recent U.S. government shutdown, saying there’s a “strong possibility” the phone won’t ship this month. Which is a fun way of saying don’t hold your breath. The original August launch quietly slid to “end of the year,” and now that date is looking more like “please stop asking, we have no f***ing clue.”

For anyone keeping score at home, Trump Mobile launched back in June with a $47.45/month plan… because who wouldn’t want a reminder of Trump’s presidency every single time their bill hits? The whole rollout was framed as a middle finger to Big Tech and foreign supply chains, landing right as Donald Trump was publicly dunking on Apple for building iPhones in China and threatening 25% tariffs on just about anyone he could find in the Yellow Pages.

That said, there was just one tiny issue… actually building a mass-market smartphone entirely in the U.S. is about as realistic as thinking Nancy Pelosi and Dan Crenshaw would willfully give up their insider trading privileges.

Of course, industry experts immediately called BS on Trump’s American-made smartphone strategy. According to estimates from International Data Corporation, less than 5% of an iPhone’s components are made in the U.S. The rest come from Asia, because that’s where the factories, expertise, and supply chains exist. 

Within weeks, Trump Mobile quietly rewrote its marketing from “built in the United States” to the much squishier “brought to life in the United States.” (Still hilarious that someone actually typed that into the website and hit publish).

Since then, the operation has taken a sharp left turn. Trump Mobile now sells second-hand iPhones and Samsung devices, advertising them as coming “without the inflated price tag.” For context: they’re selling a used iPhone 15 for $629… a YUGE $70 discount versus buying new from Apple. Revolutionary stuff, if I do say so myself.

The leadership lineup doesn’t exactly scream Silicon Valley either. The device chief previously ran a real estate construction firm in Utah. Customer service is handled by an insurance company. And the network itself is supplied by a little-known Florida MVNO reportedly run out of Trump Tower in Miami. One exec even bragged about a background in the pager industry (no it’s not Michael Scott, I looked into it).

So where does that leave the gold Trump phone? Delayed. De-Americanized. And currently competing with refurbished kiosks at the mall instead of Apple and Samsung. Probably not what Donnie Politics had in mind last summer.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Apple as mentioned in the article.