The launch of Trump Mobile’s signature golden smartphones has been delayed, reportedly due to the historic government shutdown the president helped create.
The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that the cellular phone service, created by the Trump Organization, delayed its initial plans to deliver shipments of its T1 model smartphones by the end of the year.
A Trump Mobile customer service representative told CBS News on Wednesday that the device’s delivery has been pushed back to late January, citing this year’s government shutdown as the cause for the postponement.
The Trump Organization announced the cellular phone service in June, alongside its $499 T1 model, originally slated for release in August. Within weeks of the announcement, the release was delayed to the end of the year.
The summer press release claimed its devices were “proudly designed and built in the United States,” but industry experts and supply chain analysts expressed skepticism at the claims.
The company later retracted its initial claims within weeks of the launch, instead referring to the product in promotional materials as being “brought to life in the United States.”
The phone service’s mobile plan costs $47.45 per month, in reference to Trump’s two presidential terms, and the T1 model requires a $100 down payment.
This year’s government shutdown—the longest in American history—took place from October through mid-November, and cost the country an estimated $7 billion per day.
Polling data from NBC News found that 52 percent of Americans blame President Donald Trump and the Republican Party for the 43-day shutdown.
Trump refused to meet with “Radical Left Democrats,” as he called them, over the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies, frustrated by their refusal to pass a federal budget bill.
Instead, the president blackmailed his Democratic adversaries by halting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to millions of hungry Americans.
The shutdown ended after eight Democratic senators broke ranks to pass the budget bill, despite their failed efforts to extend expiring ACA subsidies.
The White House referred The Daily Beast to the Trump Organization, which did not immediately return a request for comment.
According to the Trump Mobile website, the phone service’s “products and services are not designed, developed, manufactured, distributed or sold by The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals.”
The Daily Beast also reached out to representatives for Trump Mobile and the Trump Media and Technology Group, but neither immediately responded to a request for comment.
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