Blake Montgomery

It went up against the FBI in what could have been a deeply unsympathetic way of blocking law enforcement from getting information about a mass shooter who had died.

And I think it comes down to the fact that to have access to the Chinese market at all, you have to make concessions on privacy.

Google and Facebook are not available in China anymore.

And as much as we don't think of Facebook as a paragon of privacy, part of the reason that the company does not operate there is like kind of draconian privacy concessions that they would have to make.

Also, the Great Firewall and China not allowing them to.

It's kind of incredible.

I mean, on the day Cook resigned, Trump posted on Truth Social, I've always liked Tim Apple.

I mean, famously, Trump rechristened Tim Cook as Tim Apple in a public appearance, which Tim Cook leaned into and thought was funny.

He's made concessions to Trump as well and worked with him on his domestic agenda, his Make America Great agenda.

Trump is really obsessed with this idea of American manufacturing products.

what is the American company that does the most manufacturing perhaps of any others is Apple.

And Tim Cook has said, we are bringing more manufacturing to America.

We are building like multi-billion dollar plants.

We're going to do more of our manufacturing in the United States.

And Trump said, awesome.

I mean, there must be something about him when you speak to him face to face or like in a room because Trump's signature economic thing that he did in his second term, enacting these world upending tariffs, the iPhone has an exception to them.

And that's kind of an incredible thing.

That's the US government leaving so much money on the table from one of the richest companies in the world that has hundreds of billions of dollars in cash reserves.

Like it could pay.

And yet Tim Cook has gotten an exception.