Maine’s Senate Race Implodes, Meta’s Threads Rivals Musk’s X, and the Trump Phone Arrives
Leah Feiger: It’s gold colored. Zoë Schiffer: Yes. Leah Feiger: There’s an American flag at the bottom. Zoë Schiffer: I mean, obviously. Leah Feiger: And
Leah Feiger: It’s gold colored. Zoë Schiffer: Yes. Leah Feiger: There’s an American flag at the bottom. Zoë Schiffer: I mean, obviously. Leah Feiger: And it’s the size of your hand. This isn’t the smartphone, this isn’t subtle. No shade to anyone who bought this when we were in middle school. But for whatever reason, it’s really giving me the iPod vibes when U2 and Bono launched that whole thing where all of their music was already prerecorded on it and people were like, “Yeah, I will absolutely pay several hundred dollars more. This is an incredible investment.” What you get here is Truth Social preinstalled. And then of course, there’s been the whole Trump mobile situation, which is messy. Zoë Schiffer: Right. And that’s the real thing here because the hardware device is whatever. It doesn’t seem like this is the main thing they are doing. Again, I’m cribbing from what the Verge folks were talking about, but they made a very good point, which you just simply can’t expect there to be many a software update on this phone. You’re getting the phone. And do they plan to update that phone?
TBD, but probably not. But Trump Mobile is the play here, and that is basically just built on top of the T-Mobile network, right? Leah Feiger: Right. Exactly. Exactly. They did not specify how or where these phones are going to get made. All of their deposit terms and conditions are incredibly messy. This was supposed to be only made in America. They’ve dropped that claim. Will there be a live big rollout? Will 600,000 people be receiving these phones? I think that there’s a lot more messiness to come. And in some ways, this just frankly comes from having to run a business with a physical item attached, right? The Trump sons being involved in the crypto biz or getting involved in Polymarket. That’s not tangible in the exact same way. People need to literally hold this in their hands. Zoë Schiffer: But I think in some ways it’s all an influencer play. They’re just slapping their names on all sorts of things and making money. And we have recently found out how much money, and it’s billions of dollars that Trump has made since he’s been in office the second time.
So yeah, it appears to be working. They are able to leverage that family name regardless if the products that they are slapping those names onto even work. Leah Feiger: I’m perhaps most curious for what happens 10 years from now. What are these guys hawking next? I’m envisioning self-whitening toothpaste. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I think we’re going the supplements route. Leah Feiger: I can’t wait to discuss. Can we talk about the political scandal of the week? It is the core of my group chats. It is everything I’m thinking about when it comes to the midterms. I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, Zoë, because you’ve been the recipient of some of these chats. Graham Platner, he is currently, as of this recording, the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Maine, running against longtime Republican incumbent Susan Collins. He is currently facing many, many calls from across the Democratic Party to end his Senate bid following an allegation of sexual assault. On Monday, Politico reported that a woman who had an on-and-off relationship with Platner said that back in 2021, he entered her home intoxicated and forced her to have sex over her repeated objections.
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