No Evidence for 600,000 ‘Trump Phones’ Sold

The viral claim that Trump Mobile has secured nearly 600,000 preorders for its much-discussed phone, representing a potential $60 million windfall, appears to be entirely unsubstantiated. Despite widespread circulation online and even coverage by some news outlets, a thorough investigation reveals no credible evidence supporting these figures. This situation highlights how easily misinformation can gain traction in today’s digital ecosystem, amplified by social media and even artificial intelligence tools.

Recently, numerous posts and a few seemingly legitimate publications have repeated the assertion that close to 600,000 customers have placed orders for the device, often citing a required $100 deposit. The timing is notable, emerging just as political figures called for regulatory scrutiny of the company’s advertising practices. Some observers dismissed the phone’s potential market appeal, making these surprisingly high numbers a point of contention. However, tracing the origin of this data tells a different story.

The trail leads back to a single, viral post on the platform X. A user known as Bricktop_NAFO, an account primarily sharing pro-Ukraine content and memes, stated on January 11th that “590,000 idiots purchased Trumps Mobile phone.” This post, garnering millions of views and thousands of shares, seems to be the earliest source of the specific 590,000 figure. A separate, less-engaged Facebook post from December mentioned 600,000, but the meme account’s post served as the primary catalyst for the claim’s spread.

From there, the unverified number took on a life of its own. It was picked up by other social media accounts and eventually cited in articles by international publications like India’s Economic Times and Hindustan Times. Those reports incorrectly attributed the figure to an Associated Press story. The AP has confirmed that its reporting never contained any such preorder statistics, with a corporate communications VP stating their original stories lacked this number. When questioned, one journalist attributed the erroneous citation to a typo and pointed to The Times of India as their source, which itself had sourced the claim from the viral meme account.

The misinformation achieved further legitimacy when it was summarized by AI chatbots. X’s Grok chatbot repeated the 600,000 preorder claim, citing major news outlets that had never actually reported it. Other AI systems, including Gemini and ChatGPT, also propagated the false number, with one incorrectly attributing it to the AP and another to a tech news site. This demonstrates how AI can inadvertently cement false narratives by repackaging unchecked online information.

The fabricated statistic even reached official channels, appearing in the Threads feed of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press office, which shared a screenshot of the Grok summary. Meanwhile, attempts to verify the claim’s other assertions, like the existence of a $45 identical phone on Temu, have also failed. Experts have been unable to find a perfect hardware match for the announced Trump phone specifications.

The core question remains unanswered: how many preorders have actually been placed? The company itself has not released any sales figures and did not respond to requests for comment on the actual number. The entire episode serves as a cautionary tale about the speed at which baseless claims can circulate, gaining a veneer of credibility through repetition across social platforms, news aggregators, and AI-generated summaries. Without transparent data from the source, the true level of consumer interest in the Trump phone is still unknown.

(Source: The Verge)