Earlier this week, Apple announced “a new $100 billion commitment to America,” which included an “ambitious new American Manufacturing Program.” The additional investment is on top of their previously announced $500 billion commitment.

The Apple Newsroom press release included this:

“Today, we’re proud to increase our investments across the United States to $600 billion over four years and launch our new American Manufacturing Program,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “This includes new and expanded work with 10 companies across America. They produce components that are used in Apple products sold all over the world, and we’re grateful to the President for his support.”

The entirety of the nearly 1,500-word press release is about those last eight words: we’re grateful to the President for his support.

What “support” has the President provided, exactly? None that I’m aware of—we’ve seen only threats of tariffs and acts of retaliation. The press release is a sop to this notoriously transactional—and flattery-craving—president, a way of appeasing him and giving him what he most wants: attention for himself and his “deal making skills.”

Cook continued his relationship building (if you’re being charitable, ass-kissing if you’re not) by gifting Trump a shiny bauble: a disc of Kentucky-made glass, atop a 24-karat gold base from Utah, designed by a former U.S. Marine corporal who now works at Apple. The glass has the Apple logo cut out of it, and is inscribed with both Trump’s name and Cook’s signature.

The investment and bribe one-of-a-kind gift (no r) yielded some (entirely unexpected) results (transcript from Marcus Mendes at 9to5Mac):

“We’re going to be putting a very large tariff on chips and semiconductors. But the good news for companies like Apple is if you’re building in the United States, or have committed to build, without question, committed to build in the United States, there will be no charge. Even though you’re building, and you’re not producing yet in terms of the big numbers of jobs and all of the things that you’re building, if you’re building, there will be no charge.

That in turn pleased the stock market, which pumped up Apple’s stock more than 13% since Wednesday.

The Apple community is torn by the gift (no r). Some suggest Cook’s always been an overt Trump supporter. Others insist Cook is playing Trump like a fiddle. Some have even questioned their entire Apple-user identity.

I don’t know Cook. I’ve only met him a handful of times when I worked at Apple. Once was in 2016, when I and a small cohort of Black Apple employees sat with him in the wake of the Alton Sterling and Philando Castile police shootings to express the community’s anxieties, and to ask him to be more vocal in his support for the company’s Black employees. I have two memories of that meeting. One, Cook clearly cared deeply about Civil Rights and social justice—his admiration for Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis was not just lip service. Two, he was taken aback at the suggestion that he wasn’t showing sufficient support. He’d tweeted after those shootings and believed that everyone, inside and outside Apple, would see it—and understand its meaning. He didn’t grasp that not everyone read his tweets, nor that oblique calls for justice aren’t the same as directly standing against racism. That meeting led, indirectly, to Speaking up on racism, in the wake of yet more police violence four years later.

I share that to say that nearly a decade after that meeting, I believe Tim Cook is more of a social progressive than not. I don’t believe he supports Donald Trump and his policies. I suspect most of those policies are anathema to Cook—and that people I respect would not be working for him if they weren’t.

I also recognize exactly how naïve that sounds.

Cook is a shrewd businessman. His primary objective is to ensure the continued success of Apple. He understands that a president who is easily mollified by overt acts of ring-kissing and knee-bending is also one who is easily manipulable. I choose to believe that Cook’s actions are those of a CEO protecting his company, its employees, and its customers, and—ultimately, yes—its profitability.

Cook is an operations guy. Crediting the President for a hundred-billion-dollar investment Apple was already going to make and bestowing a glass-and-gold trinket as thanks—while weathering some backlash and a temporary loss of personal dignity—is likely seen as simply one more operating cost of goods sold.

But soon or late, Trump will demand Cook and Apple compromise on one of their “North Stars.” Will it be privacy? DEI (what Apple calls “Inclusion and Diversity”)? Environmental initiatives? Because the nature of appeasement is once is never enough.

When that happens, all these “ego appeasements” (as one friend put it) will not matter—and Apple will have alienated anyone who might care enough to defend them.