Collin Donnell in Elk: "@Gte Apple is a corporation with fin..."

I admire @gruber ‘s take here:
https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/gold_frankincense_and_silicon

The reaction I’ve seen has all been about a perceived excuse for Tim Cook, and by extension Apple itself, bending the knee.

What John actually says, and I agree with him, is that the electorate is responsible for the environment the people find themselves in. That’s the singular and most defining American thing—the buck stops with us.

Prostrating oneself before an authoritarian is a personal failure. Doing so in the name of the most influential company on Earth is deeply troubling and embarrassing.

On the up side: not even Apple can ignore elected governments. And that’s super important. Arguably more important than the abject bribery.

Cook and Apple understand that to be a corporate superpower you need the backing of the government.

Now, I’m not sure they need democracy and that’s a problem.

That’s for Americans to fix.

Apple is a corporation with financial obligations. Tim Cook will prostrate himself before Trump to the degree he can live with to fulfill those. It seems like he's trying to put the embarrassment for himself instead of Apple.

The bet, I think, is that they can appease Trump while not committing much and wait him out. He’s a nearly 80 year man with max 3.5 years left, who is likely to lose a lot of his power in 18 months if Democrats take Congress.

August 10, 2025 at 1:00:40 AM

The bet is that Americans don’t go even more to the right then they’ve already embraced with glee. Don’t over think this and imagine what someone you don’t know would feel about this circumstance.

That's true. My assumptions are that Trump is the only one who wants all this tariff stuff, so when he stops being president, it'll go away, and also that presidents usually lose congress in the midterms unless they're really popular. Maybe those are unfair assumptions.

@collin@ruby Collin, you don’t get to where you are as a people without having deeply unexamined expectations.

Replying to someone

@collin @Gte It’s worth noting that Trump levied a number of pointless tariffs during his first term that Biden didn’t undo when he had the chance. In some cases he expanded them.

Granted, those were relatively modest tariffs compared to what he has done during his second term, but history has shown Democrats aren’t above putting their own spin on dumb shit done by Republicans.

(See also: using Trump-era Title 42 expulsion power to quickly deport migrants without asylum access)

@jeff @collin @Gte

Since Republicans block Democratic tax increases, it'd be hard for Democrats to say no to revenue-generating measures imposed by a Republican.

Also some in the Biden administration might have been afraid of Fox News hammering Biden for "surrendering steel to China" or whatever.

@jonhendry @collin @Gte

I didn’t vote for Biden for him to give credence to what Fox News has to say. They’re going to spout nonsense no matter what he does.

As for revenue, tariffs are effectively a tax levied upon American consumers — mostly the middle/lower class. That’s a problem.

Democrats are no strangers to economic protectionism. That the GOP has shot past them with their ignorance doesn’t really negate that tendency. Their “tariffs are bad” rhetoric, while true, is relatively recent.