[SpicyLemonZest]

They're in his self-interest because he can, and did, turn around and convince people to bribe him for exemptions and reductions. I recognize this sounds crazy when I say it, but you can literally look up the video - Tim Cook gave him a big block of gold on public TV to get iPhones exempted from tariffs on India.

[ethbr1]

On the magnitude being insinuated, that doesn't even blip. 50 lbs of solid gold is what, $2.5M?

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don't know what you mean by "blip". Business leaders shouldn't gift government officials any amount of solid gold.

[9dev]

Let alone a jet plane.

That this even needs saying is mindbogging

[ethbr1]

Indeed. On the list of things to worry about, a Qatari $400M 747 is a lot higher than some gold.

[ModernMech]

Why are you fixated on the relative amounts, as if that's relevent? A bribe is a bribe is a bribe.

It's a gesture that says "I understand I need to give you this because you are in charge, and I need to go through you to get anything done". That's not how America works, and the fact anyone is giving any amount to get favors through Trump rather than maintaining a level playing field is the problem.

The first instance of this came in the form of tech companies renaming the "Gulf of Mexico" to the "Gulf of America." It was a small thing, but it was a gesture that showed they knew what they had to do to play ball in Trump's economy was to live in his constructed reality where it's the Gulf of America.

Then came the legal bribes where companies paid millions to settle the lawsuits he filed against them. Then came the tech bribes where they are literally giving him bars of gold for favored status.

Next will be him directing internal company culture and policy. Watch out to see which companies stop celebrating pride, it will likely be those who paid him bribes first. Then he will ask them to stop selling to certain "undesirable" customers, and they will oblige.

[ethbr1]

Because an explicit and stated method of this administration is to flood their opponents with things to fight, in the interest of pushing through big things that are important to them while their opponents are busy fighting everything and overwhelmed with the minutiae.

An effective response to that is calibrating ones outrage and asking "Out of all the things I could be fighting, what is the most impactful and important?"

Hence, I think it's a waste of time causing others to think about a token symbolic bribe.

Focus on the $250M+ bribes that are also happening.

[defrost]

Consider that a mere act of public theatre in which a token is exchanged.

Getting a grip on the magnitude of the Trump family profiteering through all the obfuscation and destruction of record keeping practices is an ongoing challenge in reporting.

* https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08/18/the-number

( Summary of the long form article above:

  At the end of Trump’s first term, CREW calculated that Trump made more than $1.6 billion in outside revenue and income during his four years as president. Recently, however, The New Yorker staff writer David D. Kirkpatrick tallied up a new number, encompassing ventures from both Trump’s first and second terms: $3.4 billion. 

~ https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-family-thr... )

[ethbr1]

Great links! I expect post-presidency investigations will turn up a lot more favorable trades from his web of associates.

Even if Trump doesn't need to put his hand in the cookie jar so obviously, many around him aren't as disciplined or experienced in obsfuscating policy-based trading.

[ModernMech]

$2.5M is not a blip, it's a bribe by any measure. We need to call things what they are. Trump has done worse for less.

Anyway, the $2.5M isn't the point, it's bending someone like Tim Cook to your will so that they would just give it to you and thank you while bending over. To some degree, he's now directing Apple Inc, since he can get Tim Cook to act according to his will.

How much is that worth to Trump?

[ethbr1]

The opposite is also true.

Does $2.5M matter to Apple?

No. They probably lose that much between rows in their spreadsheets.

So, if it's not material to Apple's finances, what does giving it to Trump mean? Symbolic gestures are symbolic, but you haven't bent someone to your will until you've made them give you something that hurts.

[ModernMech]

Tim Cook gave $2.5M, control of his company, and his dignity. He stood there and handed a gold award to a convicted felon, rapist, insurrectionist, and likely pedophile. That's now Cook's legacy. It was grotesque, and an embarrassment of epic proportions. If that didn't hurt him, he must have lost his soul long ago.

[acdha]

They gave him what he most desires: respect. Every news watcher saw one of the most powerful CEOs, a genuinely accomplished person, treating him as the more powerful party. His whole career was spent playing at being a successful business man but being known as a lightweight – his dad gave him a billion dollars give or take and he managed not to quite lose it all several times until finding some breathing room in the 2000s when Russian oligarchs started using NYC real estate for money laundering and then the video editors at The Apprentice made him a star cosplaying as a brilliant businessman. He was never in Tim Cook’s league before, or even within a couple levels, but now he’s able to demand favors from almost anyone. For someone with the raging insecurity complex he’s demonstrated for so many years, that recognition of sheer power is the best high of all.