Does Trump Mobile know how many stripes are on the American flag?

Where is Trump’s phone? We will continue to talk about it every week. We reached out as usual to ask about the whereabouts of Trump’s phone. This week, despite our best hopes, we still don’t have our phone — but we have some new doubts about the national company’s credentials.

These have been a momentous few days for Trump Mobile, as it defied the haters by announcing that its phones would be off. Shipping to buyers this very week. Not that there’s any sign that the company has actually done that, but I digress. Because what I really want to talk about today is the American flag.

I’m not American, which probably explains why I didn’t immediately realize that something in the T1’s design was broken. No, I don’t mean the gold color, the uneven spacing between the camera lenses, or the fact that it looks suspiciously like a photo. HTC phone is 2 years old. I mean the American flag that is prominently displayed on the back. At a glance, to non-citizens, it looks good. But look closely, and you’ll find something strange: It only has 11 bars. Last time I checked, there were supposed to be 13.

The thirteen lines represent the thirteen colonies that broke away from British rule to fight for independence, so you probably shouldn’t omit just two of them. What’s even stranger is that Trump Mobile Changed its logo To identify the error. Take a closer look at the almost final version of the phone It was shown in Februarywith the giant T1 logo (thankfully removed), and you’ll see the flag at the bottom has the correct number of stripes. Someone at Trump Mobile changed the logo to have stripes outside For the final release. Under the president who He wants to criminalize flag burningthis detour is very close to the edge of the law.

There is a charitable reading on all this. Look at both versions of the logo and you’ll see that the “Trump Mobile” logo at the bottom of the flag is moved closer by a fraction of an inch, about the same distance as the other stripes from each other. Perhaps it is now supposed to be the thirteenth bar, which may seem a bit sacred in its own way. This may be a bit of a harsh design, but at least it’s not completely goofy.

but Which The glossy promotional video for the phone this week doesn’t explain it. Although it mostly shows the typical version of the phone, with its 11-bar logo, there’s a luxurious, slow-motion close-up that shows off…nine stripes. nine!? This cannot be defended by a false claim about “smart” logo design, it is simply false, any way you look at it. Which is quite puzzling: why does the logo on the phone change between different shots in the video?

The obvious theory, of course, is generative AI. Trump Mobile may have just teased a quick claim from Grok for a “cool marketing video for a gold phone that definitely has the normal number of stripes in the American flag.” It certainly seems possible, because that’s not the only discrepancy: the texture of the phone’s signature gold color varies throughout the phone, being frosted in some shots and completely shiny in others. The phone’s operating screen also changes, as does its box – I counted three different versions of each. Surely only AI could be so inconsistent?

Maybe… However, things are never that simple when it comes to Trump Mobile. Because there’s another oddity in this promotional video: a quick glimpse of a scratch on the camera module, easy to miss but impossible to miss. You may have already guessed this, but in subsequent shots, he is nowhere to be seen. It seems unlikely that the AI ​​will make any scratches, which suggests that there is He was A real phone is somewhere in this video – ineptly handled and poorly filmed – but it’s likely mixed in with the sea of ​​AI-generated clips alongside it.

That’s enough to shake one’s confidence that Trump Mobile actually has phones ready to ship after all. So far, I haven’t been able to find a single person online who reliably claims to have a charging alert, let alone a phone. For our part, we have not received an email informing us that the two phones we ordered are ready to ship, and logging into our Trump Mobile account gives no clear sign that the company has received our order. There is one box labeled “T1 Deposit”, but it simply lists cell plan details that we didn’t ask for and says “Expiry Date: To Be Set”. It’s not clear what exactly it’s expected to expire at, beyond my hope of receiving a phone at all.

For the hundredth time, I have reached out to Trump Mobile for comment. Certainly for the first time, I had to ask them if they knew how many stripes there were on the American flag.

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