WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – According to a source who was not authorized to comment publicly, Donald Trump recently invited Apple CEO Tim Cook for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Cook’s meeting with Trump follows similar efforts by other prominent tech leaders, such as Sam Altman from OpenAI, Mark Zuckerberg from Meta, and Jeff Bezos from Amazon, to mend relationships with the president-elect after experiencing challenges during Trump’s first term.
Trump has said he has spoken with Cook about the company’s long-running tax battles with the European Union.
This dinner occurred shortly after Trump’s phone call with Cook and Apple’s loss in the EU over a dispute regarding 13 billion euros ($14.34 billion) in back taxes to Ireland.
“He said the European Union has just fined us $15 billion,” Trump recalled of his conversation with Cook, in an October interview with podcaster Patrick Bet-David. “Then on top of that they got fined by the European Union another $2 billion.”
The decision by the EU top court was the finale to a dispute that centered on sweetheart deals that Dublin was offering to attract multinational businesses with minimal taxes across the 27-nation bloc. The European Commission in 2016 ruled that Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid that Ireland was required to recover.
Trump’s transition team and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment about his dinner with Cook.
OpenAI CEO Altman is planning to make a $1 million personal donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, the company confirmed Friday. Amazon and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, confirmed this week they had each donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
During his first term, Trump criticized Amazon and railed against the political coverage at The Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Meanwhile, Bezos had criticized some of Trump’s past rhetoric. In 2019, Amazon also argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the company harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract.
More recently, Bezos has struck a more conciliatory tone. Last week, he said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York that he was “optimistic” about Trump’s second term while also endorsing president-elect’s plans to cut regulations.
The donation from Meta came just weeks after Meta CEO Zuckerberg met with Trump privately at Mar-a-Lago.
During the 2024 campaign, Zuckerberg did not endorse a candidate for president, but voiced a more positive stance toward Trump. Earlier this year, he praised Trump’s response to his first assassination attempt.
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