On Tim Cook, Cowardice, and Leadership
In these, the minutes before the September 2025 Apple Event, in which I — and many others — will fawn over the company’s latest gadgets, I felt I had to get this one out.
Nick Heer wrote decisively and emphatically about how the transformation outlined in Apple in China that Tim Cook oversaw, led him straight toward kissing the ring in the White House. You should absolutely read the whole thing, but here’s an observation that I’ve been contemplating for a while now:
Cook has previously advocated for expressing social values as a corporate principle. In 2017, he said, perhaps paraphrasing his heroesMartin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, “if you see something going on that’s not right, the most powerful form of consent is to say nothing”. But how does Cook stand firmly for those values while depending on an authoritarian country for Apple’s hardware, and trying to appease a wanna-be dictator for the good standing of his business? In short, he does not.
Heer’s article followed shortly after this post in which John Gruber took a slightly longer and broader view of Cook’s actions in the Trump 2.0 administration, and gives him more benefit of the doubt regarding when he chooses to play ball with Trump:
Did Cook’s Oval Office display of fealty and his grotesque golden gift make you feel something? Did it engender an emotional response? Grossed out, perhaps? A little sick? Angry? Offended? Me too. But did you feel good — reassured? proud? — when Cook skipped that Middle East Trump tour in May? You know, the one that ranged from Trump singing the praises of the murderous Mohammed bin Salman (“I like you too much”) to accepting as a gift (that he claims will wind up in the possession of his post-presidential “library”) a 747 luxury jet from Qatar.
If you choose to believe that Tim Cook is weak, unethical, greedy, or even — despite his long-professed heroes — secretly a MAGA supporter, there’s likely nothing I can say to disabuse you of the notion. You can’t prove a negative. But I would argue that that line of cynicism is the easy way out. That you’re taking comfort in directing your ire at Cook, and the notion that if Cook had more backbone he’d refuse to play this game. It’s comforting to believe it’s him and his ilk, greedy selfish billionaires, not us as a collective whole.
If you didn’t read Gruber’s piece when it was published in August, I highly encourage you to do so now. It’s compelling and quite different from his usual writing, taking a timeline-of-events — dare I say investigative? — approach to understanding Cook’s actions. I’ll admit that I had completely forgotten that Cook had snubbed the Middle East trip, and that I was completely ignorant about the overall implications of that trip regarding the Saudi regime.
And yet, after reflecting on these two pieces for a while, I still come away disappointed and sickened by Cook’s compliance and reverence toward Trump’s agenda. Yes, as Gruber points out, the lion’s share of our collective ire should be pointed at Trump, his administration, and his voters. But we also look to those in leadership roles to, well, lead the way. To use their voice and actions, their stature and influence, and, yes, sometimes their money to usher us toward a better future. For if they throw their values to the wind when the going gets tough, what does that mean for the rest of us who lack the protections that their prominence affords them?
We’re taught not to judge people by what they say, but by what they do. I won’t go so far as to guess at what Cook feels in his heart toward this administration — only he knows — but his words and actions of late paint a cowardly story.
I can commend Cook for having the conviction not to participate in the Middle East trip. But I can also be supremely disappointed in his lack of leadership — sitting, as he does, in the seat as the most powerful man in one of the biggest and most successful American companies — in standing and speaking against the rot in the foundational Democracy of the country he claims to love.
And those pictures of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy — true leaders who used their voices and actions to advocate for the very civil rights that Trump now openly threatens — that he has on his desk? Well, I’d have lain them down in shame.