[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.