Trump hosts Apple CEO at Mar-a-Lago as large tech leaders continue outreach to president-elect

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook for a Friday evening dinner at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly.

Cook is the latest in a string of large tech leaders — including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — who have sought to enhance their standing with the incoming president after choppy relations with Trump during his first term.

Trump has said he has spoken with Cook about the corporation’s long-running responsibility battles with the European Union.

The conference comes less than two months after Trump said he spoke to Cook by phone, and soon after Apple lost its last appeal in a dispute with the EU over 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 exchange 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 selection 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-country bloc. The European percentage in 2016 ruled that Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid that Ireland was required to recover.

Trump’s shift throng 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 pool, the corporation confirmed Friday. Amazon and Meta, the parent corporation of Facebook and Instagram, confirmed this week they had each donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural pool.

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 history rhetoric. In 2019, Amazon also argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the corporation harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon deal.

More recently, Bezos has struck a more conciliatory tone. Last week, he said at The recent York Times’ DealBook Summit in recent 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.