Unauthoritative Pronouncements

I know this is a rather dramatic headline and that some people might incorrectly assume that I’m mad about some particular piece of hardware or software, but it should come as no surprise that I’m hopping mad at Tim Cook for how he’s ingratiating himself to President Trump again. The President has done, and will continue to do, harm to marginalized communities. Harm was a promise of his campaign and underscored by this President’s earlier efforts the last time he was in office. The last time he was in office ended with his supporters storming the Capital Building because he was so desperate to steal the election. There isn’t a “wait and see” or a “maybe he won’t” to excuse investment in this morally-bankrupt, tin-pot dictator.

I don’t have any way of knowing what Tim Cook’s thought process was when he agreed to give a million dollars to the inauguration fund, or to know with any certainty why he agreed to travel to Washington to sit shoulder to shoulder with the other CEOs all vying for preferential treatment from the President.

In absence of knowledge there is supposition. Maybe he’s doing it to persuade certain favorable conditions on tariffs with China? Maybe he wants to the DOJ antitrust litigation to fizzle out, or be undermined? Maybe he wants retaliatory threats against the EU for DMA troubles?

In 2017, under the last Trump administration, Tim Cook wanted the corporate tax rate reduced so Apple could bring all the money it was holding overseas back to the US. To “invest” in America without investing in the institution of America by paying taxes. Apple knows best what to do with Apple’s money —especially when it is stock buybacks.

In 2019 we were all treated to the infamous “Tim Apple” sideshow as well as the Mac Pro assembly plant in Texas. Tim Cook debased himself for this publicity stunt about American manufacturing in an attempt to dodge tariffs. Don’t forget that that was while impeachment proceedings were moving forward against the sitting President.

Tim is not subtle about these transactions with Trump. They are transactions where he gives Trump something and he gets something in return. Various pundits might analyze who really got the most out of each of these transactions but Tim certainly isn’t getting something for nothing.

Another charitable reading of Tim Cook’s actions, that I heard put forward by John Siracusa on ATP the other week, is that Tim is minimizing damage that Trump can do. I don’t personally believe that to be the case, since we can easily look back to Tim’s previous transactions with the Trump administration and see they’re primarily about tax avoidance and tariff dodging for Apple specifically. There is no evidence that any damage has been minimized or will be minimized in the future.

One could compartmentalize it and say that Tim has a fiduciary duty to his employees and his shareholders to transact with the President. However, I would counter that Tim has a duty to his employees and shareholders when it comes to protecting their rights and personhood here in America. Something that Trump has sworn to threaten, and has already moved forward with in his executive orders which his cabinet is enacting. Also, don’t forget that between the last time Tim cozied up to Trump and this most recent occasion, there was that whole insurrection. That has to be in the calculus somewhere.

Why Focus On Tim?

They’re all doing it! I know that, you know that, so why do I care so much about Tim specifically? Tim is a gay man who came out in 2014. It was huge news at the time and even deeply moved me. From Tim in 2014:

Throughout my professional life, I’ve tried to maintain a basic level of privacy. I come from humble roots, and I don’t seek to draw attention to myself. Apple is already one of the most closely watched companies in the world, and I like keeping the focus on our products and the incredible things our customers achieve with them.

At the same time, I believe deeply in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, who said: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ ” I often challenge myself with that question, and I’ve come to realize that my desire for personal privacy has been holding me back from doing something more important. That’s what has led me to today.

Gay men, particularly cisgender white gay men, like Tim and I, have an amazing ability to abandon support for everyone else in the LGBTQIA+ community. Tim purports to celebrate and support the entire community.

Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day. It’s made me more empathetic, which has led to a richer life. It’s been tough and uncomfortable at times, but it has given me the confidence to be myself, to follow my own path, and to rise above adversity and bigotry. It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple.

Apple has sold Pride Apple Watch bands since 2017, and they program in little Pride Apple Watch faces every year. Apple has participated in the San Francisco Pride Parade since 2014.

How should people reconcile Tim’s explicit support of Trump with his support of trans and enby people working at Apple, buying products from Apple, and attending pride parades with Apple?

For those unfamiliar with the specific language of Trump’s executive order on Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government it is a really thorough dismantling of federal support for trans and enby people through the fun-house mirror of women’s rights. It is a reprehensible piece of work that will be fought in courts that have a lot of Trump appointees in them, especially at the highest level thanks to Mitch McConnell and Trump’s first term appointments.

Back to Tim in 2014:

The world has changed so much since I was a kid. America is moving toward marriage equality, and the public figures who have bravely come out have helped change perceptions and made our culture more tolerant. Still, there are laws on the books in a majority of states that allow employers to fire people based solely on their sexual orientation. There are many places where landlords can evict tenants for being gay, or where we can be barred from visiting sick partners and sharing in their legacies. Countless people, particularly kids, face fear and abuse every day because of their sexual orientation.

I don’t consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I’ve benefited from the sacrifice of others. So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.

Don’t worry though! The San Francisco Pride Parade will be June 28th-29th this year so go to that and watch Tim smile and wave! Don’t forget to buy this year’s hottest new Pride band showing Apple’s support for the community!

From the 2024 Newsroom post Apple’s 2024 Pride Collection shines light on LGBTQ+ communities:

Through this Pride Collection, Apple is proud to continue its support of LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations whose efforts are bringing about positive change, including ILGA World, a global federation committed to advancing the rights of LGBTQ+ people worldwide; and the Human Rights Campaign, a global advocacy group working to ensure all LGBTQ+ people are treated as full and equal citizens. Additional advocacy organizations Apple supports include Encircle, Equality North Carolina, Equality Texas, GLSEN, Equality Federation, the National Center for Transgender Equality, PFLAG, SMYAL, and The Trevor Project.

You are better off giving to any or all of those organizations directly in 2025 —you were always better off giving directly, but people also wanted a fun watch band. I don’t see how a new Pride Collection will provide the necessary fascist-neutral offset for Tim Cook.

Sam Altman and Peter Thiel are gay so why don’t I give them a hard time? Because no one expects Sam Altman or Peter Thiel to be good people with any kind of conscience. They don’t pretend to be at all. They are cisgendered homosexual men that insulated from any anti-LGBTQIA+ bullshit by their wealth. Being gay is not something they use to understand others in the world, but a taunt they assert because they have so much money that there’s nothing anyone can do to them.

Tim is also insulated by wealth. The thing about Tim is that he clothes himself in caring about these issues. Merch isn’t caring.

Likewise, we turn to the Republican war on DEI, where they are aggrieved about not being able to get their unqualified white kids into schools as legacy admissions, and handing them jobs, but they frame this as “merit based”. Zuckerberg readily, and quickly complied with dismantling Facebook’s DEI efforts to win favor with Trump.

Apple has not done that, and some people think not dismantling things counts as action. It doesn’t count when you show up to lend credibility to these policies and these people. Apple bloggers pointed to Apple issuing guidance against the anti-DEI shareholder petition recently as positive, but again, Apple doesn’t want anyone telling Apple what to do regardless of subject matter.

Again, there’s Tim, figuratively clothing himself in the quotes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Monday. Clothing Apple’s home page in it. Then showing up to Trump’s inauguration like the words of MLK can do the work that he will not.

Another thing Dr. King wasn’t too fond of was police sweeps. Let’s not forget the efforts to secure the border through Trump’s other executive orders which have resulted in an increase in ICE raids in an attempt to see if they can catch some people.

One of the detainees was a U.S. military veteran “who suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned,” Baraka said in a statement. “Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized.”

In response, ICE said, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may encounter U.S. citizens while conducting field work and may request identification to establish an individual’s identity.” The agency added that this was the case during the Newark raid.

These ICE raids terrorize people, intentionally so. They drag US citizens as collateral damage like a net trolling for fish. Here’s a heartwarming story about ICE agents being turned away from an elementary school. I wonder how many of the elementary school kids use Apple products?

So yes, I do hold Tim to a higher standard than these other robber barons, but that’s because Tim claims he holds himself to those high standards. I am measuring him against the ruler that he has provided and he comes up short.

What To Do

I’ve seen people call for Tim Cook to resign. I stop short of that at the moment. While I am pissed off, I am also pragmatic. What would be the result of his resignation? Would someone better equipped to protect Apple’s interests while also protecting Apple’s customers and employees? I’m not so sure there is.

No, what I would like to see is Tim standing up for what he purports to believe in. Not speaking about things that have inspired him, or donating to charities as some kind of fascist-neutral offset, but devising a way to argue for the protection of human dignity for his customers and employees from this federal government. If he can transact a tax holiday, or tariff carve-outs, he can figure out what to wheel and deal to protect people. Many of whom are his employees and customers.

If that is too hard, or he’s worried the board would oust him, then I wonder what the point of his wealth and power is if he will only use it for more wealth and power? It is not easy to stand up for people on a national stage, but it is orders of magnitude easier for him than it is for people down here where we are.

I know that things are tricky internationally. Apple operates in places that have had policies in place for a long time that aren’t like what we have (had) in America, but I would say the distinction is that people had access to things that are being taken away from them now. America is also where Apple is headquartered. Pointing at other, more restrictive countries is not an excuse to stand with Trump.

Tim concluded his 2014 Bloomberg Businessweek column with:

When I arrive in my office each morning, I’m greeted by framed photos of Dr. King and Robert F. Kennedy. I don’t pretend that writing this puts me in their league. All it does is allow me to look at those pictures and know that I’m doing my part, however small, to help others. We pave the sunlit path toward justice together, brick by brick. This is my brick.

You can afford more bricks, Tim.

There is, unfortunately, no effective way for us to persuade Tim with anything other than our words of criticism. Because none of these tech CEOs are any better. We can’t take our stuff and go somewhere that’s speaking out to protect us. We can reduce spending, sign up for fewer Apple services, but that’s not going to move the needle. Again, as futile as it sounds, we should rely on accurate, incisive criticism.

I don’t mean name calling, or throwing pies (although pies would be kinda funny), but serious critiques of Tim’s statements and actions, as I did above when pointing out his hypocrisy.

When Tim posts on X Apple bloggers should write about how Tim continues to use Elon Musk’s propaganda machine instead of publishing through other means. Every time he does it. They should not uncritically produce a blog post for their content mills that’s just an exercise in padding out the X post into something they can run some ads against. If you’re writing anyway you can spend that time productively instead of being a passive funnel.

When Tim is in a promo video for Severance - a show about people severing themselves to compartmentalize their work and personal lives — we should be able to say something about how Cook has compartmentalized his belief in equality with his belief in Trump. We can especially do that when all of those things happened in the same week.

For some reason Apple fans are much more comfortable discussing the minutiae of Apple Products than they are discussing Tim’s and Apple’s political maneuvers. I know they are not politically savvy pundits (I include myself in that), and they may not like politics but they’re not AI experts, and that doesn’t stop them from spilling ink about AI.

It is incumbent upon me, and you, and all the other Apple podcastoblogosphere nerds who have read this far to not just take Apple’s press releases and media events as things to cover that exist in a vacuum outside politics, and in isolation of the dignity of the people using the products and services. Particularly when Tim Cook starts to get what he wants from his transactions with Trump. We should ask if it was worth it and remember what Tim has condoned to get it.

The very least that Tim can do is endure valid criticism. He is undeserving of adulation or being placed on a pedestal as a role model to gay men. That is part of the price he is paying here. We will not give him his flowers.

That might seem meager but unlike Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and especially Elon Musk, I believe it is possible Tim Cook does care about how both he, and Apple are perceived. Definitely not as much as he cares about Apple’s finances and ability to exert control, but it’s in there somewhere. That is part of the marketing, after all. If there is no truth in that, and he doesn’t care, then that would be worth knowing as well.

Will anything rise to the level that Tim uses his wealth and power to protect us from the inevitable further erosion of our rights? I don’t know. The one area where it is possible is privacy. Possible, but not guaranteed.

Where’s the line for Tim? I’m not sure Tim knows. We should help point it out to him, because he’s standing on the other side of it.