WASHINGTON – A small video from a recent White House dinner for important industry leaders has gone viral on social media. People can’t stop talking about how nervous Apple CEO Tim Cook seems to be. A lot of people have shared the video, which shows Cook saying “thank you” to President Donald Trump eight times in less than two minutes.
In the footage, Trump asks Cook about Apple’s plans to invest in the U.S. while they are having dinner. Cook says, “I want to thank you for setting the tone that made it possible for us to make a big investment in the United States.” That speaks a lot about how focused you are and how you lead, as well as how much you care about new ideas. He then says “thank you” several times during the conversation, even once to First Lady Melania Trump.
The sentence has been repeated so many times that it has sparked a lot of replies on social media. One person on X (previously Twitter) said, “Tim Cook says ‘thank you’ eight times in less than two minutes.” Amazing. Another person said, “I counted NINE! (The last one was kind of a double thank you for good measure).” A lot of people thought that the constant “thank yous” were an indication of “extreme discomfort & guilt” or nervousness. One person said that the whole mood of the dinner seemed “stuffy & performative.”
President Trump hosted the event, which was attended by a number of powerful tech titans, like as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Five CEOs of Indian descent were also there, including Sanjay Mehrotra from Micron and Shyam Sankar from Palantir. Tesla CEO Elon Musk was not at the ceremony, which is interesting because he and Trump have had a public fight.
Reports said that the discussion was mostly about important topics like AI and the tech industry’s promise to invest in the US. The businessmen complimented Trump’s policies and those of his administration, but the viral video of Tim Cook’s conversation has become a prime example of how industry titans and the political establishment don’t always get along.