There were a lot of losers in the South Carolina Republican primary. Most of them were candidates not named Donald Trump.
Go ahead and add Apple to the list, too.
Trump, the runaway winner in the Palmetto State, has made his antipathy toward the electronics giant clear. His victory on Saturday came one day after he called for a boycott of Apple products on account of the company's refusal to help the FBI crack the encrypted iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists.
"Tim Cook is living in a world of the make believe," Trump told Bloomberg on Friday. "I would come down so hard on him--you have no idea--his head would be spinning all of the way back to Silicon Valley."
Earlier in the week, the billionaire real estate developer called Apple "disgraceful" and suggested it should be forced to comply with the federal investigation. And last month, Trump slammed Apple's foreign manufacturing, vowing, if elected, to make the company "start building their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries."
Meanwhile, the GOP field's Apple fanboy, Jeb Bush, withdrew from the race Saturday night after a distant fourth-place finish in a state where his family claims deep roots.
Tim Cook may not be losing any sleep over the South Carolina results. Yet the early success of an Apple detractor and the collapse of its top booster is no accident.
Before Trump's rise rewired the race, the GOP pre-primary featured a quiet scramble to build ties to Silicon Valley. Beyond a rich vein of potential campaign cash, the tech sector offered the allure of new-economy credibility.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul made an especially early dash for tech industry hearts and minds in 2013. That spring, at a Senate hearing aimed at shaming Apple for its tax-avoidance schemes, he rose to the company's defense, telling Tim Cook the company deserved an apology from Congress. A week later, Paul received a hero's welcome when he made his first visit as a senator to Silicon Valley and offered a libertarian-inflected pledge to keep Washington out of the industry's way.
Paul's presidential campaign never gained traction, and he withdrew earlier this month after a disappointing finish in Iowa. Ditto for Chris Christie, who dropped out after New Hampshire -- but not before winning some fans among the tech elite by emphasizing his ability to forge compromise as the Republican governor of a blue state. And Bush tried to slough off the ultimately toxic notion that he was an establishment retread by referring to himself as a "disruptor," that technospeak cliche, and in turn defending Uber and other gig economy startups against stricter labor laws.