I get it: Trump is a loaded gun ready to blow at every moment. He’s always one tweet away from another unhinged catastrophe. So you either tell him he’s the very bestest leader in all the world and get something out of it, or you fight and suffer reprisals. Cue Jeff Bezos. And I understand a company deciding NOT to fight. Because tariffs, because shareholders, because, because, because.

But if you stand next to Trump while he attacks the free press and say nothing, you are now complicit. If you stand next to Trump while he boasts of being solely responsible for a brand new Apple plant, when it is NOT EVEN an Apple-owned plant, and when it has in fact been making Mac Pros since 2013, you are now complicit. You are complicit in the destruction of truth, facts and reality. In the end, of decency and sanity.

And when Trump tweets about that very same “opening” and releases a video of it implying he made it all happen; when you provide him with the very words he immediately uses to lie again; when journalists reach out to you about this nonsense and you still decline to comment or to set the record straight…fuck me, but you’re now beyond complicit. Let’s not even start discussing China, Taiwan or Hong Kong.

I don’t want to play the What Steve Jobs Would’ve Done game. But every cell in my body tells me his belief system would’ve held, despite the folly of a mad king or any oppressive regime. That he would’ve recognized the moment and acted with the courage needed. He may have been many things but a coward wasn’t one of them.

So yeah I get it: all those words truly are now utterly empty.