“Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, reports Axios. The donation will be a personal donation directly from Cook rather than a donation from Apple”
I’ll defend Apple as being the least shitty of the big tech giants but I can’t defend this.
It really is a class war, not a culture war.
Always has been.
He’s totally not doing it to get Trumpf to like him. He’s gonna get his own imaginary political role.
These CEOs are funding hate, violence and the end of American democracy - they have enough power, money and influence to oppose, yet they don’t. They decided that a few must be sacrificed for the greater
goodprofit.Something happened on the 5th of December. Tomorrow is the 5th of January. Just in case anyone’s calendar app is stuck closed. Interesting if true…
Well… they saw that they can show their real face.
Apple stopped being apple when this cuck took over.
It always was same megacorp.
Yeah but it did do cool shit and pretended to be unique…
People now see them what they are, another parasite leeching on the working people
The personal donation part is weird. This sounds like a deliberate attempt to appease the fascists while trying, desperately, to maintain Apple’s image.
Tim Apple.
After that slip he still bends the knee. Good old classic reliable Tim Apple
You best start believing in technofeudal distopias, you’re living in one.
I feel bad for Tim.
He made a point during the first Trump administration that having a seat at the table is better than not.
This time around, it seems his first compromise is making a public “pay to play” donation to Trump, while keeping Apple itself out of the audit trail.
I am positive this is the last thing he wants to do, and is doing his best to protect the interests of his company while taking all the shrapnel from people explosively decrying his “bent knee” to this “Con-man in Chief”.
I blame Trump’s mafia tactics more than anything else. As hard as it is to compare a nearly $4-trillion company to mom and pop shop, this feels just like the local mafia shaking down small shops for protection money.
Again, I feel bad for Tim.
Yeah, these billionaires really need our sympathy. Things are pretty rough for this guy. Kinda makes me want to start a go-fund-me to help drum up some support for the poor chap.
Nah, actually he can fall into a sink hole tomorrow and slowly asphixiate while I eat my generic cheerios with slightly expired milk dripping down my grinning chin.
Not much to do about it. But fuck him.
Nope. Sorry. I don’t feel bad for members of the modern Association of German National Jews.
I’m not going to judge Tim by his intentions, I’m judging him by his actions. Did Trump solicit this bribe or did Tim preemptively do it?
Doesn’t matter. He did it.
Pull up Tim’s statements from the lead up to the first Trump election—before Trump held the office, the tone was different. After the election, Tim knew he needed to maintain a seat at the table, now he is absolutely being forced into public “offerings” to the new king.
I’m sure being forced to play by Trump’s mafia rules bothers Tim, but he knows taking the high ground could have negative effects which would (hopefully) outlast any presidential administration.
It really isn’t any different from the Mom and Pop shop scenario—I’m not going to blame Mom and Pop for “supporting” the mafia.
https://fortune.com/2016/08/24/apple-tim-cook-fundraiser-clinton/
Cook is an oligarch and he has long lost the ability to tell right from wrong (personal matters notwithstanding, but that’s a very very low reference point).
Don’t think it bothers him in the least.
Again, you’re trying to make excuses for him based on what you assume his intentions are. There’s no evidence that Trump solicited these donations, so it’s not comparable to the mafia. He just had to keep quiet and politically agnostic and Trump would likely not have noticed. The fact remains that Apple is way more popular than Trump would be unlikely to take action against Apple. I’m judging Cook based on his actions and the harm it will cause. I don’t care about his intentions; the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Extortion, more like
iClass-traitor.
He’s the CEO of Apple, my guy. He’s serving his class
It’s time to boycott Apple
I’ve been doing that for decades, the last apple product I used was an Apple ][e. Couldn’t resist that sweet Oregon Trail action at the time.
5th Gen iPod Video for me, circa 2006. I actually loved the device, but having to use the trash software that was iTunes is what radicalized me.
I haven’t bought new Apple since 2006 as well. Loved the iPod and iTunes from that era. Then the good features got removed and bloated with other shit. That and enshittifing the MacPro line kept me from buying new.
edit: You use to be able to brows and stream other people’s iTunes libraries if you knew their IP address. No friend’s list. No family plan. Just the IP address. It was wonderful.
I’m streets ahead!
I’m way ahead of you.
I haven’t been buying apple products because they have mediocre hardware for high prices.
Do you know how formalized boycott by everyone in country is called? A ban. Time to ban it.
Sure let’s start a witch hunt banning people and companies who don’t align with our unique individual politics. What could go wrong?
This country makes me sick to my stomach. What a fucking joke.
If you can find a way: get out.
For everyone else, you have my sincere sympathy.
And go where? Where in the world is safe right now? I thought about living in the Philippines with my family, but China is probably waging war soon. Europe? With the way America is headed and the war is going? Let’s assume Ukraine wins: Europe is out of gas and will militarize and right wing governments are rising with German nationalism leading the battle drums, Ukraine gonna be in an economic, Russia is gonna be subservient and dependent on China.
That leaves countries with metropolises that are suffering from westerners gentrifying their neighborhoods with the USD being strong in these places. We are really going to make the poor in other nations pay the price for our government’s doing?
Do you mean safe or safer than the U.S.? Because you can’t be guaranteed of absolute safety anywhere. If you’re queer or brown, there are a lot of countries where you’ll be safer than the U.S.
Fair point. If you are in immediate danger then yeah, not gonna argue. But if you are able to stay and do something, that should be preferable.
I am brown (Filipino). I won’t be leaving.
All these Billionaires PAYING Trump MILLIONS of Dollars is PROOF he CANT be Bought!
None of these companies would touch Trump with a 10 foot pole in the situation wasn’t so dire. But he is the next president, and he is known to respond to stuff like this. Bend knee, kiss his ass and carry a huge wad of cash. This is just the cost of doing business, and even if a vocal minority cries out most people still buy iPhones, Teslas and shop at Amazon and Wal-Mart.
It’s almost like capitalism is a terrible idea.
I struggle to call this capitalism. It’s so twisted and corrupt it doesn’t resemble what it started out as.
lol I interpret this as sarcasm, as with many of your other comments around Lemmy. If they are so, I think they’re funny and so far I agree with what you actually value, democracy. However, it took me some time to understand your sarcasm. This might be just me, but I wonder if your comments could be subjected to Poe’s Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe’s_law). Do you think it’s impossible that they could be?
I got the joke right away, I don’t think there’s any problem with it.
The thing is, no matter how obvious a contradiction is, far-right folks won’t understand any of it, because they’re so dumb. You cannot give them even the most basic, easily digestible facts and explanations, because even that requires a brain, which they don’t have.
So I think, these kind of jokes are perfectly fine for our entertainment, and no amount of facts and information will ever convince the dumbest of the people.
They’re being shaken down. Same as Mark Zuckerberg being summoned to a meeting with Trump and the next day paying $1m to the same fund.
I’m betting these meetings went something like, “You don’t want a president as an enemy, do you? Cough up.”
And don’t think of it as a tax on the rich - it’s not going towards the benefit of the American people. It’s extortion.
It’s insane that this is even legal.
This isn’t even remotely surprising. Apple has been a shitty company for well over a decade.
And before it wasn’t?
I can’t help but wonder if this is to take the news spotlight away from the Siri recording scandal that just popped up
What Siri recording?
A 20 dollar per device settlement for selling your data for billions. And the lawyers get paid big. Who the fuck is working for the working class? The law? Defense attorneys? Leaders?
lol 98 million? why not something proportional to the ad revenue that apple made in said years? oh I know why because law exists for billionaires. this is just apple some more money so that this scandal goes away as soon as possible which might be even more costly to them on the long run than the 98 mil they are paying.
