COOK 2.0

Apple CEO Tim Cook Tells Stephen Colbert Why He Came Out

BN-KI274_cook20_G_20150916130854To the Late Show With Stephen Colbert writer who came up with the following question for Apple CEO Tim Cook on last night’s show: well done.

“You yourself came out as gay recently,” Stephen begins. “Was that an upgrade or just a feature that had not been turned on before?”

But as we’re coming to expect from Colbert’s Late Show schtick, there’s a serious question behind every cleverly worded joke.

“And the reason I ask,” he continues, “is that experience of growing up in Alabama as a resident outsider because of your sexuality — did that inform in any way your trying to help people who are in hardship around the world?”

“It did, yeah,” replies Cook, who has established Apple’s first ever charitable wing (nice, considering the company is worth a trillion dollars by some estimates).

Related: Corner Office: Six Powerful Out CEOs Who Aren’t Tim Cook

“In all honesty, every day I come to work I have right in front of my desk a photo of Robert Kennedy and a photo of Dr. King. And every day I sort of ask myself — it was Dr. King’s quote that said “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is ‘what are you doing for others?’

“And it became so clear to me that kids are getting bullied in school, kids were getting discriminated agains, kids were even being disclaimed by their own parents, and that I needed to do something.

“Where I valued my privacy significantly, I felt that I was valuing it too far above what I could do for other people, and so I wanted to tell everyone my truth.”

Then Tim tries his own awkward iPhone joke. Leave it to the pro.

Watch below:

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