Apple’s Gay CEO Tim Cook Donates $1 Million to Trump
Other tech companies, or their CEOs, are also donating to Trump's inauguration, including Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI.
Apple CEO Tim Cook will personally donate $1 million to President-elect Trump’s inaugural committee, according to Axios.
Cook, who is gay, joins several other tech CEOs who have contributed to Trump’s inaugural fund, including Sam Altman, the gay CEO of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, who is similarly donating $1 million of his personal fortune to the fund.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg are also donating $1 million, but through their respective companies.
Cook believes the presidential inauguration is an important American tradition and is donating in the spirit of unity. His contribution is allegedly supposed to signal that he is not partisan, as he has demonstrated that he believes in engaging with elected officials from both major political parties. Apple itself is not expected to contribute.
The CEOS have contributed more to Trump’s inaugural fund than to President Joe Biden’s inauguration four years ago, reports Newsweek. For example, Apple, but not Cook, donated $43,200 to Biden’s inaugural fund, while Amazon gave $276,000. Meanwhile, OpenAI and Meta (nor their CEOs) donated no money to Biden’s inauguration.
The tech companies’ donations to Trump come at a time when the president-elect has been harshly critical of companies like Meta and Google, based on the belief that the parent company of Facebook and the popular search engine have censored conservative users.
The donations are viewed as an olive branch of sorts to Trump, hoping to build a more positive relationship with the incoming president, who could potentially issue executive orders or sign into law bills that would drastically impact how tech companies operate.
Two other tech companies, Google and Microsoft, have not yet donated to Trump’s inauguration but did give $337,500 and $500,000, respectively, to Biden’s.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Cook has deliberately cultivated a years-long personal relationship with Trump, dating back to his first term, through face-to-face meetings and dinners. Trump hosted Cook at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last month.
Cook has been praised for figuring out how to best approach the president-elect, developing meeting strategies “where he would bring one data point to home in on a single issue in a meeting,” which the Journal says “helped keep [face-to-face] meetings from spiraling in too many directions.”
According to Axios, Cook’s relationship with Trump has been so friendly that the Apple CEO once gave Trump a $5,999 Mac Pro computer from an Austin factory the two toured in 2019. Cook has also met with Trump at Trump Tower in New York and the president’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
While Cook has not publicly commented on the decision to donate to Trump, Altman, who has been more vocally pro-Trump than other tech CEOs, has expressed eagerness to work with a future Trump administration, telling The New York Times last month, “President Trump will lead our country into the age of A.I., and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead.”
Several non-tech companies have also contributed large amounts to Trump’s inaugural fund, with financial institutions Goldman Sachs and Bank of America donating seven figures. Other companies donating at least $1 million include crypto exchanges Kraken and Coinbase, and motor companies Toyota, Ford, and GM.
As reported by AFP last month, Trump has boasted how CEOs of various companies were seeking to curry favor before he takes power, telling reporters during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, “In the first term, everyone was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.”
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