Many on the right certainly think so.
Incensed by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence bowing under corporate pressure from Cook and other business leaders by signing a “fix” to his state’s discriminatory “religious freedom” law, a number of right-wingers have pounced on what they see as an example of left-wing hypocrisy.
In a CitizenLink video, Focus on the Family’s Stuart Shepard called out Cook for recently boasting about Apple’s “fantastic new home in China” but this week slamming “religious freedom” bills as “dangerous” in a WaPo op-ed.
“Mr. Cook, if China is ‘fantastic’ could you at least bring Indiana up to ‘okay’?” he said.
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO and likely GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, told The Wall Street Journal that there was “nothing objectionable” with Indiana’s original “religious freedom” law and that Cook and other CEOs had engaged in “a level of hypocrisy here that really is unfortunate.”
“When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he’s in, including China and Saudi Arabia,” Fiorina said Thursday. “But I don’t hear him being upset about that.”
Bernard McGuirk, an executive producer of Don Imus’ radio show and frequent O’Reilly Factor guest, took things a step further by branding Cook a “bigot hypocrite” on Fox Business Network this week:
“You have this hypocrite, this bigot hypocrite, Tim Cook, who is running his mouth about the whole thing. He sells products to Iran. He sells products to Saudi Arabia where they execute people if they’re gay…he won’t allow these religious people to exercise their freedom…he doesn’t allow this Orthodox Jewish guy to refuse service that’s the whole point of the law is to allow him to exempt himself from certain situations.”
Calmer heads, such as The Washington Post’s opinion writer Jonathan Capehart, dispute the validity of these criticisms and claim Cook is merely navigating the waters of today’s corporate landscape.
Watch Capehart’s op-ed video “Stop Accusing Apple CEO Tim Cook for Gay-Rights ‘Hypocrisy'” below.
Fox Business Network Dagen McDowell also responded to McDowell’s comments with the following statement read on air Friday:
“Earlier this week on the Imus in the Morning radio program, which is simulcast on this network, there was a comment made calling Apple CEO, Tim Cook, a bigot. The Fox Business Network would like to make it clear that we in no way believe that. Mr. Cook runs a company that is an American success story and Apple has become a worldwide brand.”
