Tim Cook’s record is pretty clear: Under his watch, Apple didn’t create a world-changing product. But it posted world-beating sales, and the stock market rewarded him for it.
Cook also has other accomplishments, including one he is much less likely to boast about: He got Donald Trump on his side.
We are a little bit inured to this kind of thing now. In Trump’s second tenure, Big Tech CEOs and everyone else who wants favors from him — or at least wants to escape his wrath — knows how to do it. You can simply cut checks to his ballroom, or library, or his inaugural fund. You can also try selling a chunk of your company to the US.
But Cook figured out how to get on Trump’s good side early, during his first term. That was a notable accomplishment at a time when lots of tech bosses were actively hostile to the president.
We could periodically see evidence of this with our own eyes. In 2019, for example, Cook and Trump toured an Apple plant in Texas, and Cook stood at Trump’s side when Trump said Apple had opened the facility at his behest. That was not true — the plant had opened in 2013, during the Obama administration — but Cook didn’t bother to correct Trump.
But a lot of the Cook/Trump relationship happened behind closed doors, via frequent visits to Washington. And it all kicked off with a private phone call, Trump said on Tuesday via his Truth Social platform: He said Cook called him early in his first term, with “a fairly large problem that only I, as President, could fix.”
Trump doesn’t explain what the problem was. But it’s a pretty good assumption that it had to do with tariffs on electronics made in China. That could have been a real problem for Apple, if Trump hadn’t granted it an exemption.
The truly striking thing about that story, in Trump’s telling, is just how flattered Trump was to get a phone call from the CEO of one of the most valuable companies in the world.
“When I got the call I said, wow, it’s Tim Apple (Cook!) calling, how big is that? I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to “‘kiss my ass,'” Trump wrote.
It’s a very telling passage. By definition, President Donald Trump is a more powerful person than Apple CEO Tim Cook. But Trump likes rich people, and Trump likes famous people, and Cook is both. And Trump was tickled that a very rich, very famous businessman would take the time to pick up the phone and call him.
“That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship,” Trump continued in his post. “During my five years as President, Tim would call me, but never too much, and I would help him where I could.”
In Trump’s second term, when CEOs have become much more public in their support for Trump, Cook has followed suit. Which is why we remember Cook handing Trump a gold-and-glass bauble in the Oval Office — a gesture meant to symbolize Apple’s commitment to building things in America.
We don’t really know how that’s going to pan out, though it seems very, very unlikely that Apple will ever comply with Trump’s demand that it make iPhones in the US.
But we do know that the two men are very likely to stay in touch for the next few years. Though Cook is stepping down as CEO in September, he will stick around Apple as executive chairman of its board — a job Apple specifically says will involve “engaging with policymakers around the world.” Translation: More phone calls and visits to Washington, at least through the end of 2028.
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