Apple CEO Tim Cook swears he is ‘not a political person’

Apple CEO Tim Cook has spent the past year cozying up to President Donald Trump. He donated $1 million to the president’s second inauguration, delivered a gold plaque to the Oval Office, and even attended a private screening of the widely panned documentary Melania.

But in an interview this week, the gay tech entrepreneur characterized himself as “not political.”

“I interact on policy, not politics. I'm not a political person on either side,” Cook told Good Morning America co-anchor Michael Strahan on Tuesday. “I’m kind of straight down the middle.”

Cook appeared on the show to discuss the approaching 50th anniversary of Apple, plus his views on philanthropy, artificial intelligence, data privacy, and global affairs.

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Despite Cook’s claims of impartiality around U.S. politics, he expressed gratitude “that the president and the administration is accessible to talk about policy.”

Cook has not expressed an intent to use that line of communication to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community amid a nationwide crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights, demanded by the president himself.

Rising anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment has made it harder for LGBTQ+ people to enter tech and entrepreneurship more generally, The Advocate reported in its latest cover story.

Nearly four in ten LGBTQ+ workers in Silicon Valley have witnessed homophobic behavior at work, a 2019 survey found. Major tech companies have faced hundreds of allegations of gender-based wrongdoing, according to a 2025 study from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre.

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Issues like these have not yet met Cook’s threshold for policy engagement; instead, they seemingly remain within the political chatter he told Good Morning America he seeks to avoid. Apple representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cook said that Apple is keeping an eye on court decisions around Trump’s tariffs and planning its next steps accordingly. In the meantime, he said the company is renewing its investment in domestic manufacturing.

“We’re putting $600 billion into the U.S. over the next four years,” Cook said. “We're going to make over 20 billion semiconductors in the U.S., and again, this is not only for the U.S. market-sold iPhones, it’s for worldwide iPhones.”

This article was written as part of the Future of Queer Media fellowship program at The Advocate, which is underwritten by a generous gift from Morrison Media Group. The program helps support the next generation of LGBTQ+ journalists.