Columnist Mark Steyn called out Apple CEO Tim Cook Thursday night for criticizing Indiana while doing business with the Iranians and other human rights violators. (RELATED: George Will To Apple CEO On ‘Horrible’ Indiana: But You Do Business In Homophobic Saudi Arabia?)
In an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, Steyn remarked that “if Kim Jong Un made them the right offer,” Cook would “happily do business” with the North Korean regime. Steyn added that Cook and Apple pick on the likes of Indiana “because they can,” but won’t pick on Iran because “muscle respects muscle.”
HEWITT: I am a huge fan of Apple. I own every Apple device. I’ve got two of them in front of me. I think Tim Cook is a visionary. And I haven’t sold a share of the stock since I’ve got it. I’ve still got it. I believe in it. It’s a great product. On the other hand, he wrote this piece in The Washington Post, and he did not mention. I called his PR people and invited him to come on. I’d like to hear him answer this. He is selling products in Saudi Arabia. He is selling products in China. These are two of the world’s worst human rights violators. There is no freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia. In China, people are thrown in jail for gathering for prayer. You never see them again. What in the world prompts American CEO’s to attack a Religious Freedom Restoration Act which has been in effect in Washington, D.C. since 1993 without a single instance of the discrimination of the sort worried about by critics of the Indiana law?
STEYN: Yeah, you’re right. In a sense, a company like Apple has no nationality, has no borders. It’s global. And it does business with whoever wants it to do business with. I have no doubt that if Kim Jong Un made them the right offer, Apple would happily do business with Kim Jong Un. The Iranian government, after today’s events, will have a lot more money with which to buy a lot more Apple products, and I’m sure he looks forward, Apple looks forward to opening up in the Iranian market.
They pick on Indiana because they can. And that’s the difference. That’s why they don’t, there’s nothing accidental about this. People who think that litigious betrothed gays are accidentally stumbling into homophobic bakeries, it’s an organized campaign targeting these bakeries. Now they’re not going into the nice, little Muslim patisserie in Dearborn, Michigan, or Falls Church, Virginia, and demanding that the Muslim bakers bake them a gay wedding cake, because they know they’d get an entirely different kind of response.
Muscle respects muscle. And so Apple is happy to intimidate Indiana, but it understands that it’s, when it comes to Iran, that it’s not going to be able to intimidate them. And that’s why, and that’s why, and as you say, Apple makes very fine products. And congratulations to them on that. But when the CEO of a global company thinks that the biggest issue facing the world today is homophobic wedding cakes in Indiana is nuts, and he’s a bully, because bullies pick the weak targets, and Indiana Christians are a weak target, just like these poor Christian students in Kenya are a weak target.