• Shawdow194@fedia.io
    10 months

    We’ve had former presidents sell their family peanut farms to avoid conflicts of interest

    The carters felt that relinquishing the business to someone else’s care would separate them from these affairs and avoid the possibility of their financial holdings resembling any conflict of interest while President Carter was in office.

  • ToadOfHypnosis@lemm.eedeleted by creatorEnglish
    10 months

    Compete with but will lease their service because there is no actual competition with a barrier to entry like national cell towers.

    • jaybone@lemmy.zipEnglish
      10 months

      Unless you run the country through executive orders.

  • thyristor@lemmy.ptEnglish
    10 months

    I guess it’s OK as long as it’s not a peanut farm brand.

  • veee@lemmy.caEnglish
    10 months

    With American-made phones and American call centres, right? Right?

    • HowAbt2day@futurology.todayEnglish
      10 months

      “Good morning and thanks for calling MAGA Mobile. Please listen to the options and make your selection for the best possible service. For Spanish, press 423 and wait for a knock on the door. For English, god bless Trump…”

      • LedgeDrop@lemmy.zipEnglish
        10 months

        … "For English, say ‘God bless Trump’ …”

        Fixed that for you /s (… I really want off this apocalyptic ride)

  • Flamekebab@piefed.socialEnglish
    10 months

    It turns out that maybe having a gentlemen’s agreement for how things should work was a bad idea.

  • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
    10 months

    At this point anyone who buys Trump-branded shit get what’s coming to them. Dude is the most notorious grifter in history.

    • tourist@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10 months

      are you saying all my Trumpcoins, Trump NFTs, degrees from Trump university and deep frozen Trump steaks are worthless

      • Kitty Jynx@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10 months

        Just drink some Popov grade Trump Vodka at one of his many totally not bankrupt casinos to take your mind off of it.

  • JHRD1880@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10 months

    They already tried that with the ‘Freedom phone’ and it was a massive scam, so this is quite on brand for him.

  • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    10 months

    It’s going to be a cheap low-priority MVNO with deceptive wording to make it sound like its own independent network. Absolutely zero chance it’ll be competitive in any way.

    • mercano@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10 months

      Won’t stop the red hats from buying it out of loyalty to the Emperor.

      • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        10 months

        True. Then it’ll get absorbed by one of the bigger MVNOs, or one of the main networks’ prepaid services, and become a cheap subsidiary or just get dissolved completely. But by that point they’ll already be onto the next grift.

    • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      10 months

      Came to say this - either its going to use existing infrastructure owned by those companies, or it’s going to completely suck. In neither case that’s competition

      • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        10 months

        Oh it’s 100% gonna be an MVNO, it’s expensive as fuck to roll out new infrastructure, and something like that certainly wouldn’t go unnoticed anyway.

        It’s just gonna be the worst shit-tier kind of MVNO. Like Cricket back in the 2000s. Service = maybe.

  • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10 months

    I’m sure it will ‘compete’ in the same way as all his other failed businesses.

    • Mirshe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10 months

      See, here’s the thing when you’re the President. You can just have your FCC chair shut them down. You can actively quash literally any boundaries to being a monopoly, and nobody can do anything about it (from a legal or regulatory standpoint).

      • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10 months

        If he actually launches a Trump phone service, it’s going to be a MVNO that just piggy backs off the main operators’ infrastructure. It’s not like he or his idiot sons are going to buy spectrum and build towers.

        He wouldn’t really be competing with T-Mobile, Verizon, or AT&T. He’d be competing with Boost Mobile and companies like that.

        • vividspecter@lemm.eeEnglish
          10 months

          Maybe they are planning to take back that spectrum they gave to Boost/Dish on a pinky-promise that they’d actually become a competitive network, during the Sprint and T-Mobile antitrust case.

          Which would fit with the FCC’s increasingly mob-like behaviour under Trump.

        • Mirshe@lemmy.worldEnglish
          10 months

          You’re missing the point. The admin has full control over spectrum licensing. This means Trump could easily have the FCC just revoke all other spectrum licenses for cellphone comms, and just forcibly seize those towers. Don’t look at it like it’s going to operate like a corporation, because I promise you it won’t.

        • TechnoCat@lemmy.mlEnglish
          10 months

          Wasn’t Starlink experimenting with phone calls? Could be a deal with Elon.

          • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.worldEnglish
            10 months

            Yeah, but I doubt they’re close to having the capacity to offer full 5G service like a traditional carrier. I have T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom‘s US subsidiary) and they have a deal with Starlink but it’s (a) in beta and (b) limited in what you can do. Unless things have changed, even when it launches, it’ll be just LTE text and voice and you need a pretty modern phone.

            So, it’s not like a drop in replacement for a land-based plan where you get internet and stuff. Plus, Trump and his kids aren’t going to do any of the hard work. Even before his presidency, “Trump” was just a licensing brand and now it’s a pretty shitty brand. It’s not like the family was running Trump Steaks and packing boxes for shipment or whatever.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish
    10 months

    A president is allowed to found companies?

    Either way, he sure has time on his hands.

  • rumba@piefed.zipEnglish
    10 months

    Competitors severely penalized in 3…2…

    The great wireless firewall of America.

  • TheFriar@lemm.eeEnglish
    10 months

    The word “could” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence

    • InnerScientist@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10 months

      No matter what your stance on Trump is, you must agree that it isn’t completely outside the realm of possibilities.

      • DokPsy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10 months

        He took the KISS method of advertising/marketing. Slap the brand name on everything you can to squeeze out as much money from the "fan base"as possible