Et Tu, Tim Cook?
Why it's so disappointing to see the Apple executive sucking up to Trump
On January 24, 1984, Apple released the Macintosh, a personal computer that was overpriced and clunky but was explicitly marketed as a radical tool for fighting conformity and even political oppression.
Years in the making, the Macintosh was touted in a landmark Super Bowl commercial that explicitly invoked George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Directed by Ridley Scott, the ad featured a woman in running gear hurling a sledgehammer at a screen displaying a Big Brother-like figure.
It concluded with an announcement: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”
On January 24, 2026, exactly 42 years after the Macintosh went on sale for $2495, Alex Pretti, a thirty-seven-year-old ICU nurse, was assaulted, shot, and killed by CBP agents in Minneapolis while using his iPhone to document their activities. Hours later, as news of the killing sent shockwaves across the country, Apple CEO Tim Cook attended a private White House screening of Melania, a documentary about the first lady that Amazon paid $75 million to acquire and market.
At the event, a tuxedo-clad Cook posed for a picture with the film’s director, Brett Ratner, who has been credibly accused of sexual assault, and sexual harassment by a half-dozen women and also palled around with Jeffrey Epstein. Why on earth did Cook feel compelled to attend a party for a bribe/”documentary” released by a rival company — especially in the middle of a giant snowstorm — and why was he willing to hobnob with a renowned sleaze like Ratner? We may never know what Cook was thinking, beyond “I gotta be nice to Trump so he doesn’t destroy us with tariffs.” Regardless, the optics were catastrophic.
Over the last few years, we’ve all come to expect the absolute worst of our tech overlords, extraordinarily wealthy men like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk who were once willing to be critical of Donald Trump — and could certainly afford to be — but have since become the president’s most ingratiating lapdogs.
Yet even to those of us already deeply disillusioned with Silicon Valley billionaires playing footsie with fascism, Cook’s conversion is bitterly disappointing.
Since he succeeded Steve Jobs in 2011, Cook has fashioned himself as a kinder, gentler tech mogul. This was especially true during Trump’s first term in office, when he traveled the country talking about Apple’s “moral responsibility” to grow the economy and combat climate change. Whatever you do, lead with your values,” he told graduates in 2022. According to one industry observer, he “exemplifies Stoic virtues like patience, wisdom, and temperance.”
Cook has also gotten involved in politics, albeit selectively. He donated to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, and hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in 2016 — the same year he was floated as a possible running mate. He has expressed support for DACA and told climate change deniers to buzz off. In 2014, he came out as gay via an op-ed in Bloomberg, writing, “We pave the sunlit path toward justice together, brick by brick. This is my brick.” Three years later, he denounced the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, saying “Hate is a cancer, and left unchecked it destroys everything in its path,” and pledged $2million to anti-hate organizations.
Like the rest of Silicon Valley, Cook’s approach to Trump has changed dramatically since Nov. 5, 2024. He personally donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and in August presented Trump with a ludicrous 24k gold and glass statue at a White House press conference. He fawned over the president a few weeks later at a dinner with other tech execs. “It’s incredible to be among everyone here, particularly you and the first lady. I’ve always enjoyed having dinner and interacting,” said Cook, sounding like a normal person and not at all like a hostage. Apple is also one of the many corporations to donate to Trump’s gargantuan White House ballroom. All this for a guy who can’t even be bothered to get Cook’s name right (it’s not “Tim Apple.”)
In an exceedingly meek internal memo that was leaked last week, Cook said he was “heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis” and made vague calls for “deescalation,” but did not mention Trump, ICE, CBP, or any of the people responsible for the violence. Nor did he say anything publicly, on social media or elsewhere.
Part of what makes Cook’s groveling so pathetic is how it contradicts the iconoclastic brand identity that Apple has cultivated for 42 years, since the “1984” commercial. Shortly after Jobs returned to the company in 1997, Apple unveiled a grammatically questionable new slogan, “Think Different,” and an accompanying ad, “Here’s to the Crazy Ones,” which featured Albert Einstein, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and other changemakers. “While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius,” intoned narrator Richard Dreyfuss.
A decade later came the “Get a Mac” campaign, which starred John Hodgman and Justin Long as personified versions of a PC and a Mac, respectively. The entire premise of the campaign, which was overseen by Jobs, was that PC’s were fussy, unreliable, and hopelessly uncool, while Macs were youthful, easygoing, and dependable. Put another way: PCs were for dorks; Macs were for hipsters. (Nevermind that Hodgman was vastly more appealing than Long, but I’ll save that rant for another time.)
The branding seemingly worked: As of today, Apple has a market cap of nearly $4 trillion, making it one of the most valuable companies on planet earth (and four times what it was worth just five years ago). In the United States, iPhones account for 60% of the smartphone market. At this point, even many of us who are disgusted by Cook’s complicity can’t begin to fathom our lives without Apple products in them. All of which means that Cook — and Apple — could easily afford to stand up to Trump, or at least not bend the knee quite so egregiously. He simply chooses not to.
It makes you wonder how a remake of that famous Super Bowl ad might look like in 2026. Instead of smashing Big Brother’s image with a sledgehammer, that lone runner would probably just hand the authoritarian a shiny plaque.
Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The Contrarian
My family and I have been having this conversation. We aren’t changing out our iPhones now - we rely on them too much. We won’t buy new Apple products, however. There are other acceptable computers and laptops made by companies without public ring-kissers at the helm, although their CEOs are undoubtedly morally compromised like Cook.
That’s the problem: once American corporate leaders decided in the 1970s-80s they no longer had to care about the common good, since only “shareholders” matter, they were free to act against the public interest when helpful to their individual fortunes.
Cook, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Thiel, Musk … etc. … apparently think bribing Trump is the current key to success, more than a society that protects the rule of law and constitutional rights of its citizens.
I believe this is tragically shortsighted, but that’s where we seem to be.
One may reasonably conclude that Cook never had any morals, it was all a façade, or one may conclude that as he became wealthier, the morals slowly faded into nothingness.
Historian Timothy Snyder recently wrote on his substack something that confirms this. He wrote about the notes for J. R. R. Tolkien's lecture to British schoolchildren in 1938 of the topic of dragons, on the eve of World War II. Snyder summarized:
"It is the spirit of dragons, concluded Tolkien, that has survived, and it survives in us, or in some of us. A man can become a dragon through sheer greed. If we want to find a dragon, the place to look is the 'vaults of the Bank of England.' And if 'you want to see a dragon-heath just go out and look' at a landscape tortured by machines, a sky blackened with smoke."
https://snyder.substack.com/p/tolkiens-dragons-and-ours
The enormously wealthy, like dragons, prize only their wealth.