Apple CEO Tim Cook has gotten a lot out of schmoozing with Donald Trump, from massive, inequality-fueling tax cuts that paved the way for a massive Apple stock buyback to some kind of vague and probably bad-faith guarantee that the president won’t suck the company into his pointless U.S.-China trade war. Likewise, Trump has gotten to egregiously inflate and then take credit for Apple’s plans to open more facilities stateside.
So it’s no surprise that he’s continuing to do so, judging by this laudatory tweet from first lady Melania Trump showing Cook posing with the Trumps at a meeting with business leaders in Bedminster, New Jersey on Friday night. But just like the last time Cook was photographed at a Trump event, the CEO seems to have some trouble eking out more than some sort of tortured half-grimace, half-smile hybrid:
Computer, enhance:
Just a humble suggestion: If you’re gonna sign a Faustian bargain with the guy who stands against everything you claim to stand for in theory except the massive, trillion-dollar corporation you stand for in practice, perhaps you should commit to looking a bit more cheerful.
Otherwise the big guy might catch on to how uncomfortable you look in his presence and undo all your hard work trying to get him to forget about that campaign-trail grudge! I hear he can be kind of arbitrarily willing to backstab anyone if he senses any lack of total fealty.