You're falling for $59M bullshit about the Trump phone
Am I the only person checking sources anymore?
You’re here because you’re watching politics get body-slammed by digital culture and content creators. I’m here because I’m the only one who can guide you through it.
“So … someone’s lying about something and I can’t wait to find out who.”
That line closed out a two-minute video I made on June 18, 2025, about the Trump Org announcing it would be getting into the mobile phone business. I called the timeline the website provided — committing to a September delivery date — “ambitious.”
In between some gold sneaker shaming and Trump cologne castigation, I finally make a point: “These days, we’re like very, very not afraid of profiting in office.” She, in her naive youth of 11 months ago, did not have an imagination expansive enough to conjure anything close to the corruption on display today.
Neither did The Recount’s audience. That video got 116 likes on Instagram. 117, now that I just liked it. But quicker than JD Vance can damage a [insert campaign, object, reputation here], the Trump Mobile chatter vanished. Into the black hole of our attention with all the other microscandals that came before it.
That would’ve been the end of it (imo), if not for the unshakeable commitment of one man. For the past few months, streamer Charles White, aka penguinz0, aka MoistCr1TiKaL, has broadcast his pursuit of the gold T1 phone to his 18M YouTube subscribers. His first video in January was what reminded me of the lack of “American-made” phones in hands.
This hyperfixation compels White to call the Trump Mobile customer service line, in five videos over the course five months, in search of a single production or delivery update rooted in reality. The customer service agents, when available, are entirely detached from this earthly realm, skilled in the art of just making shit up.
The highlights come during a repeated line of his questioning, trying to figure out if the phone is even real. In his first video, White asks if the agent has held a T1 phone. She hadn’t, but adds “it is real.” He presses if she knows anyone who has held one, which is met with: “I’m gonna be honest with you, no.”
In video two, he asks if they’re testing the phone yet. The agent replies that it’s “actually above my pay grade.” I was, by definition, lmao-ing watching this. Four videos in, one customer service rep claims to have held the “sleek” device. In the latest update, he’s told the phone will ship “any day now” and “we don’t even have a, like, ETA” in the same breath.
So, 11 months post-pre-order, something White said at the beginning of all this nonsense remains true: People paid “$100 for the idea of a Trump phone.”
“Now you still have nothing to show for it. Just an empty hole in your wallet where dreams once were.” — penguinz0
This weekend, social chatter about the invisible Trump phone surged.
How I uncovered the bullshit at the core of the coverage, which creators propelled its explosion across social, and why corruption content is having a moment … all below!
TAKING A STRANGE TURN
This wave of content started because Trump Mobile updated its Terms & Conditions this month to include the small, uncomplicated detail that no phones might arrive at all. Justified crashout for those who pre-ordered, if you ask me. But about those orderers …
If you’ve read or watched any coverage about this elusive metallic device in the past few days, you were most likely fed this detail: 590,000-600,000 phone pre-orders added $60M to Trump’s bank account. The sudden saturation of this coverage surprised me. As I write this, it’s featured in Substack’s trending bar:
Some of this platform’s most influential figures posted about it: Andrew Egger, Adam Kinzinger, Dean Blundell, Chris Cillizza, Aaron Parnas, Scott Dworkin, the list goes on. (Side note: If anyone knows where the political women are, please direct me there.) This kind of content electrifies their already engaged audiences. But I have to ask, dear reader … at what cost?
It brings me minimal pleasure to report that the numbers you’re seeing wall-to-wall are — I believe the mathematical term would be — “totally fucking bogus.” Walk with me.
THREE VARIANTS OF VIRALITY
Third: This is the most contagious wave of this content we’ve seen.
Patient Zero: Camp Callout’s Apr. 3 Instagram Reel repurposing a clip of an angry Trump supporter yelling about not getting his T1 | 3.8M views
Aided and abetted by Dem creator Spencer Hakimian’s video on Apr. 25
The Spread: Propelled by rips of the video making it to other platforms, a couple breakout performances of hopeful customers disappointed, but mostly just liberal creators having a schadenfreude moment.
The Difference Maker: This scaled to epic proportions because more trad media figures and outlets took the information peddled by creators at face value and actually ran with it.
Chris Cuomo touted the $59M profit as breaking news on TikTok
Outlets like TIME, The New Republic, NJ.com put the numbers in articles
MS NOW’s Ari Melber did a segment featuring the same clip as Camp Callout (without mentioning it’s from January) — a TikTok of Melber’s segment has 1.7M views in under 24 hours
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Upon further inspection …
About half of the social posts with millions of impressions throw out the number and don’t bother to mention a source. The half who do work up the courage to add a citation mostly refer to an article aggregated by Yahoo Finance on May 10. The original source, Moneywise, throws out the 590k number as an “estimate” — an estimation of what, we don’t know.
Some peddlers, Ari Melber and Mediaite numbering among them, reference an article from an outlet called “International Business Times UK.” I asked my British co-worker Jemima what the tea on IBT is, and she had never heard of them. Bad sign. What’s worse? The author of the article major players are citing is definitely not a journalist — she may not even exist. Go ahead, look up Bernadette B. Tixon (literally). Insert Nene Leakes “it’s getting weird…”
Second: Starting to understand the evolution of the “source” behind these waves.
The Link: Deep within that fuckass IBT UK article is a hyperlink that I guess no one bothered to click on. It links to an article from PhoneArena.com with that cursed $59M figure squatting right there in the headline. But again … no source.
I reached out to the (presumably real) author for insight, but have yet to hear.
The Spread: Some saturation had to come up between the original post from the angry MAGA phone buyer (who has 75 followers btw) on January 8 and the PhoneArena article on the 16th. My favorite platform in existence, Junkipedia, unlocked the answer.
Jan. 11: a few posts on X go viral containing the stats in question — the most engaged post has 2.8M views from a British account and was retweeted by Rage Against the Machine frontman, Tom Morello
Jan. 13: There it is, MeidasTouch EIC Ron Filipkowski posts to 1M followers
Ron Filipkowski@RonFilipkowski600,000 suckers pre-ordered Trump Mobile phones which were supposed to be made in the US and delivered in September. They aren’t made in the US, nobody has their phones yet, and the company keeps giving different answers to people why that is the case.11:51 AM · Jan 13, 2026 · 1.33M Views722 Replies · 2.68K Reposts · 14.9K LikesGavin Newsom’s Press Office account quote-tweeted it, adding another 800k views
Patient zero: A popular anonymous left-wing account called MAGA Cult Slayer made the first move on Jan. 11, posting a TikTok to X of a woman wondering about the sanity of those, you guessed it, 590,000 people. I decided to look her up.
Grace Note: It was at this point in my search for the meaning of life that I came across a January article from The Verge affirming the conclusion I had come to that the sourcing is just completely missing here. Thank the lord. Only one thing to add: The posts above are not the “oldest online mention of the 590,000 figure.”
First: The bizarre roots of this viral rise reveal themselves.
The Timeline: I looked for the video I mentioned above, shared in January, and discovered the user “LB” posted it in November 2025. That non-chronological algorithm works in funny ways. There were a few posts, mostly inconsequential, except one breakout from a known satire account.
The Carrier: One of the users who helped bring the current wave of this nonsense to X is Suzie Rizzio. She has posted 277,000 times since 2016. Prolific poster in resistance lib culture. So it’s no surprise that she is the key to unlocking all of this.
Nov. 26, another ripped TikTok + tweet: “Wow those Gold Trump phones that 590,000 people paid a $100 deposit on still haven’t been delivered”
Patient zero: The untraceable man. Featured in the video she attached is what I can only describe as a devastating mix between Emeril Lagasse and Homer Simpson speaking into the camera.
“So that means the 590,000 people that each put down a hundred dollar deposit? You got fucked by Trump again.”
Here’s just how farkakte this situation is: I looked up this man’s username to see just how early his contributions were to this … discourse, if you can even call it that. Another fun discovery! That original account no longer exists because “we keep getting banned,” his new profile says. Hmm, wonder why.
WHAT I ACTUALLY CAME HERE TO SAY
Before this mental succubus consumed my entire afternoon, I had the intention of placing the phone frenzy within a larger framework of increased media coverage of Trump’s corruption.
This was kinda sparked by a live I watched dedicated to this topic. Tara Palmeri hosted Tangle’s Isaac Saul after he’s taken quite the digital beating from his readers for publishing this: The everything, everywhere, all at once corruption story.
He spends a lot of time directing his flame at Jared Kushner, the angel sent by Saudi Arabia Donald Trump to bring peace to the Middle East. Judd Legum of Popular Information has dedicated a ton of space and time to warning of not just Kushner’s villainy, but of the press’ apparent blind eye to it. From Apr. 20:
“Articles about Jared Kushner’s diplomatic role with Iran that mention Kushner has received billions from the Saudi government (2/28-4/19):
NYT: 5 of 58
WashPost: 1 of 43
WSJ: 0 of 40
AP: 0 of 26
CNN Wire: 0 of 18
NY Post: 0 of 17
Chicago Tribune: 0 of 4
LA Times: 0 of 4
Boston Globe: 0 of 2
Doing some hashtag noticing, whether about weird numbers or non-mentions, is really the bare minimum for a job in news media. If we can’t commit to that foundational practice, what hope do we have for getting audiences to care when it’s essential?
This is something Isaac brought up in the interview: “It’s hard to get the public to care about it, I can’t say exactly why.” I asked The Recount social team if this shows up in our engagement when we cover corruption. Danielle said it “depends how it’s framed … some that we think will be hits are flops.”
Her answer made me think about a video I saw Jessica Burbank post this week about all the members of the Trump admin who stand to line their pockets as long as we’re at war. Ka has a way of making people care about this capital and corruption, oligarchy and overreach even when reaching peak political burnout.
So I asked, what signals is she picking up telling her this is breaking through to Americans?
“Wider audiences aren’t paying attention to corruption, but make no mistake, that’s not because the American people are ignorant. They know what’s happening. They expect it. They’re sick of it. Would you watch a TV show if the same episode ran everyday? Maybe if it was like the SpongeBob bubble bowl one. But that’s not what this is. It’s imperialism and genocide. No one wants to watch that, so people become withdrawn from the news generally. Being intensely aware is depressing.
It’s too much to struggle to pay rent and keep food on the table. They don’t know the names of Trump officials and what defense contractors they’ve worked for. But, if you stopped someone on the street and said ‘are members of the administration are profiting from this war?’ They’d say ‘yeah probably.’ That’s huge. You don’t need to know names. I’ll take that. It’s a sign the tide is turning.”
LOOSE ENDS
📝 Word I learned today: plaudit
2 : enthusiastic approval, usually used in plural — “Behind the Pulitzer Board’s Epstein reportin g plaudits” (via Maxwell Tani, Semafor)
🕵️ Someone you should know today: aki lee camargo — I have the luxury of getting to observe his phenomenal work up close … and now you can too.
Aki takes on queer and Asian digital culture thru his lens as a Colombian-Japanese journalist. He came out of the gate HOT with his first substack post on America’s obsession with wasians (watch out hudson williams). It started so much discourse, he had to turn off his Instagram notifications. More posts coming soon!
🥹 Something to make you smile today: I have a major big smiley coming for you Thursday. So in the case of today, if there’s something you’ve got to share with me, I would love nothing more!
Christ that was a lot of reading, admittedly some of it was funny, to get nowhere.
590K is definitely not believable. Do we have any idea how many people really sent 100$?