Dear Readers:
In this week’s roundup of clips, we bring you three videos well worth your time.
First, video correspondent Landry Ayres tells the story of the Trump Mobile T1—the “made in America” phone that quietly stopped … claiming to be made in America. The language was downgraded from adhering to a strict federal manufacturing standard to the much softer promise of mere “assembly” on these shores. The Trump Empire’s enthusiasm for bilking its supporters truly knows no bounds.
Next, our editor-in-chief Shikha Dalmia, in conversation with The New Republic’s Greg Sargent, explains why the administration’s immigration crackdown is really a test of the kind of country we’re becoming—and why the abuses it normalizes are due process and free speech problems for every citizen, not just immigrants. The entire conversation is rewarding, but do not miss this particular clip.
For our final clip, our senior editor Andy Craig, narrated by video contributing editor Jacob Repkin, makes the case that we’re long overdue for some constitutional housekeeping. He lays out three amendments—on congressional and presidential age limits, fixed terms for the Supreme Court, and pardon reform—that he argues members of both parties should be able to embrace. Watch the video—but also make sure to read Craig’s case in full.
For more videos from The UnPopulist, go here: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram.
1) Donald Trump’s “Made In America” Grift
A year ago at Trump Tower, the president’s sons unveiled the Trump Mobile T1. It was gold and shiny, loaded with bells and whistles, and—crucially for its capacity to exploit the patriotic grift market—built in the United States.
And it perfectly fits a presidency that has turned the office itself into a brand to be licensed—gold sneakers, $TRUMP coins, a fight night on the White House lawn—where the flag-waving is the wrapping and the brand expansion and self-enrichment are the product. In this clip, Ayres strips off the gold paint to show what the T1 actually is underneath.
2) The Push To Downplay Immigration’s Salience Plays Into Authoritarian Hands
In this next clip, from Dalmia’s recent conversation with Sargent, she makes the case that the administration’s immigration crackdown is a test of the kind of society we’re becoming. The enforcement-first reality we’re living through, she contends, is not just a threat to immigrants but an invitation to a police state.
The truth is, when ICE can detain legal residents without warrants, deport people protected by court order, and shoot Americans without full accountability, those stop being immigration problems and become due process problems, free speech problems, problems for every citizen regardless of where they were born. As she puts it in the clip, the Democratic instinct to lower the salience of immigration as a political issue is, in essence, an argument for lowering the salience of authoritarianism.
3) No, Sorry, Treating the Constitution as Untouchable Isn’t Faithfulness to the Founders
We tend to treat the Constitution as untouchable. Amending it is so hard that the text effectively becomes a fixed backdrop, a set of immovable constraints, rather than something we actively govern with. In our last video, Repkin narrates Craig’s case that this is a mistake we make at our peril: some of the failures driving the present chaos are baked into the constitutional text itself, and dancing around the need for amendments won’t be enough.
Craig proposes a set of overdue fixes aimed not at locking in one side’s preferences but at the structures that let power go unchecked. In the end, treating the document as untouchable is a refusal to govern ourselves as the Founders intended.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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