Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has maintained a working relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, and he touched on that in a recent interview.
Cook sat down with Esquire‘s Ryan D’Agostino to discuss Apple’s 50th anniversary, but he was also asked about how he navigates the Trump administration.
Cook responded by saying that “the Trump administration is very accessible.”
“So you can talk with them about your point of view on things,” said Cook. “They may not agree, but you can engage. You can be heard. You may not, in the end, be able to convince. But engagement for me, not just in the U.S. but around the world, is so important because it is very complex, working through local laws, local customs, local culture, local regulations. Every country is its own story. Everybody’s looks at things differently.”
“The only way you get a feel for that is to sit before someone and communicate and engage,” he added. “If you went in my conference room, you would see the Teddy Roosevelt quote ‘It is not the critic who counts.’ I’ve never believed that just yelling from the sideline about plus or minus was a good strategy. Your voice just goes into the wind.”
Cook went on to say that it is important to have “values that are consistent,” and he assured that Apple’s values and his own have not changed.
He emphasized Apple’s focus on user privacy, the environment, accessibility, and education.
“So you’ll see me everywhere, and you’ll wonder ‘oh, he’s meeting with somebody that has a different view than him,'” Cook concluded. “I think that’s good. I think it’s good. I think a problem in the world right now is that it’s so polarized and different views aren’t shared or discussed. They just become hardened. And I don’t think that’s good.”
In an interview last month, Cook said he is “not a political person.”
“I interact on policy, not politics,” he said.
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