Michael Strahan interviewed Tim Cook for Good Morning America. It’s a short, 5-minute segment (and heavily edited—I wish we could see the whole thing). Two headlines from the media coverage jumped out.

One, from CNBC, misleadingly claims that “Tim Cook squashes retirement rumors,” with an equally fatuous story to accompany it. John Gruber at Daring Fireball does a terrific takedown of what he aptly calls “journalistic malpractice.”

A second headline making the rounds, in response to Strahan’s question about Cook’s cozy relationship with Donald Trump’s administration, is Cook’s assertion that he’s “not a political person.” (For example, HuffPost, or more trenchantly, The Advocate.)

The question comes at the 3:44 mark (that’s a timestamped link). Here’s a transcript:

Strahan: You were at the inauguration last year, just feet from the President. You gave him a nice gift at the White House. You were at the screening of Melania, the documentary for the First Lady. There’s so many people saying you’re really close to the administration, and you’re being criticized for that. How do you separate the two? Or are you able to?

Cook: Well, what I do is I interact on policy, not politics. I’m not a political person on either side. I’m not political and so I’m kind of straight down the middle, and I focus on policy. And so I’m very pleased that the President and the administration is accessible to talk about policy.

My immediate reaction to hearing Cook describe himself as “not a political person” was this meme from The Good Place (YouTube; spoiler alert for a decade-old sitcom).

(The gist: Chidi is appalled to learn that Eleanor sold fake drugs to the sick and elderly, to which Eleanor proudly asserts, “But I was very good at it. I was the top salesperson five years running.” Chidi, stunned, clarifies, “OK but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?”)

Cook’s assertion that he’s apolitical, “straight down the middle,” and focused only on policy, is the equivalent of proudly declaring you were the top fake-drug salesperson. It doesn’t, in fact, exonerate you. It’s worse.

Claiming to be “not political” is an inherently political stance—one often made by those in positions of privilege and power. Claiming to be apolitical when interacting with any presidential administration—but especially this deeply transactional one—is to, willfully or naïvely, admit to being, at best, disingenuous and, at worst, exploitative.

Is there any administration with which Cook wouldn’t be “very pleased” to work? American politics have lurched hard to the right. As the country teeters on the brink of authoritarianism, what does “straight down the middle” even mean? If mass deportations and state-sanctioned murder are administration policies, what, exactly, is the “middle”?

Being apolitical is far worse than being politically on “the wrong side.” Someone—or some business—who stands clearly in opposition to my beliefs can be protested, boycotted, and argued against. Declaring yourself “not political” means I’m boxing a shadow that shifts with the light: sharply defined one moment, faded and indistinct the next.

Such a shadowy person can’t be trusted to stand firm behind any stated belief. Is “Privacy is a fundamental human right” an apolitical statement, or an unwavering North Star? Is Apple’s stance on inclusion and diversity an unyielding position, or merely current policy? Is Cook’s defense of immigrants at Apple a moral responsibility, or one of convenience? To ask it bluntly, does Tim Cook care about anything at a personal—and not just policy—level? Are his beliefs any more solid than a shadow? Does Cook even see how being “not political” is worse?