On his blog, Spyglass, M.G. Siegler has thoughts on all these tech bros, especially Tim Cook, dropping a cool million to Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Oh, I’m sorry, did I say “fealty”? I meant “unity”, which is the rationale Cook is apparently giving for the donation, “sources” told Axios' Mike Allen. That’s speaking to the unity of the country, which, fair enough, I guess. But really, the most interesting element is the unity amongst these CEOs in all somehow deciding to give the exact same amount of money. Clearly, there was either direct coordination here – a sort of, “how much money do you think we should all give so this isn’t some sort of bidding war?“2 – or indirect by way of the first such donation from Mark Zuckerberg at Meta.

But token amount of money aside – and, to be clear, this is essentially couch cushion money for both the companies and CEOs involved here – this donation is not some sort of “great American tradition” as Cook is said to be trying to frame it. Certainly not for Apple itself. And while other tech companies have given money to other inaugurations in the past, notably to President Biden’s day four years ago, these $1M checks are above and beyond anything done historically from these companies.4

Look, there are many reasons why I’m not the CEO of a trillion-dollar company. But certainly on that list would be that I don’t think I could make such a donation. Easy for me to say not being anywhere close to that position and decision, of course. But still, if you take a step back and take into account all we know, or at least think we know about these individuals and companies, do we really believe any of them are truly comfortable with these donations? Perhaps a couple of them are, but I would not put Tim Cook on that list.5 Come on, obviously most of these companies and individuals as proxies are writing these checks because they feel like they have to. In the name of unity, yes. Unity in that they’re all in the same bad predicament.

Trump has been soliciting bribes in the most mob-like, obvious way. He’s saying, “Yo Tim Apple, that’s a nice company you got there. It would be a shame if anything untoward would come upon it.” And Tim Cook decided to play the game.

It’s also important to note that $1M is literally peanuts to all of these tech bro billionaires, but it’s likely enough to keep Trump from looking their way during the next excruciating four years.