Donald Trump surrogate Wayne Root, a former Libertarian vice-presidential nominee, Monday called for conservatives to boycott Apple and its products and to pull out of their shares of the Silicon Valley tech giant's stock unless CEO Tim Cook is fired for refusing to support the GOP convention this summer.
"He has his job for the moment," Root told
Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program. "It's time for conservatives to make phone calls to Apple headquarters, make sure you contact Tim Cook's office, the board of directors. Make sure you let them know you own thousands of dollars of Apple devices and you're going to get rid of them, or at the very least, when your contract is up, you're going to get new devices from new companies and look for alternatives. I think it's very important we make our voices known and our opinions clear."
Root noted that a few years ago, liberals forced Mozilla co-founder
Brendan Eich to step down after attacks over his $1,000 donation to supporting a California gay-marriage ban proposal in 2008.
"That's the liberal way," Root said Monday. "They try and ruin your job. Ruin your business. Hurt your sales, and I think conservatives need to play the exact same
Saul Alinsky playbook."
Root continued that President Barack Obama says things "that anger me every day, they outrage me as an American, as a patriot, and as a Republican," but still, he's never called Apple and said not to donate to the Democratic convention.
"I never thought of doing that," he said. "I'm an adult, I can separate the business ... and liberals aren't capable of that."
But, he said he believes "liberals live in a bit of a bubble" and that "Cook is drinking the liberal Kool-Aid."
If conservatives don't keep their Apple devices, he maintained, "Cook will have no power. We have a lot of power and it's time to show it."
Apple last week said that it will not contribute financially or in any other way to the next month's convention in Cleveland because of Trump's incendiary remarks about Hispanics, women and other groups. Google, Facebook and Microsoft will continue to provide some services to the four-day convention at the Quicken Loans Arena.
Apple and Cook have not responded to Root's demands.