In conversation with Mark Cuban

Asked why he has become so active for the Harris ticket, Cuban says patriotism and independence drive him, and that people show it in different ways.

I'm not a democrat. I'm not a republican.

He says he has voted Republican before and would against a non-MAGA nominee, even with Biden still in the race, judging policies and character. His claim is that Trump has taken over the party, and that Harris is the better choice for the country.

the Republican party is now the family business for Donald Trump

His presidential votes were George W. Bush twice, Obama twice, then Clinton and Biden. Before that he voted for Ross Perot (called Jr. in the transcript), and his first vote went to John Anderson. In 1992, after selling his company, he lived in Los Angeles and says Texas contacts asked him to help Perot's campaign with computers and software, though he was not involved in its decisions.

Sacks asks whether his surrogate role is also acting. Cuban says he truly believes in it, that his view is always relative to the other candidate, and that he is not a big fan of Trump after giving him a shot eight years ago.

He ties his Perot link to his first company, MicroSolutions, which did network integration work that helped Perot Systems. He also says acting classes taught him to let go, a contrast to the constant analytical thinking of business.

Cuban says they met at a Super Bowl party at Mar-a-Lago after his company's sale was announced in 2000. Trump waved him toward the rich people's veranda. Trump later invited him to Trump Tower to discuss selling merchandise on donaldtrump.com. Cuban recalls an office whose walls were covered with pictures of Trump.

After his show The Benefactor was cancelled in 2004, Trump sent a letter that Cuban characterizes as follows. He says there was no beef.

basically saying you suck

In 2007 Eric Trump reached out about Russian MMA fighters, and Cuban's HDNET network broadcast their fights. They became friendly again until Trump's Twitter attacks, which Cuban answered for years. He welcomed the 2015 candidacy because he dislikes traditional politicians.

he's the best thing that ever happened to politics

He says they spoke ten to fifteen times. Trump answered emails by handwriting on printed pages that an assistant scanned. Cuban reads this as avoiding a paper trail and says Trump has said so aloud. Another host replies that a scanned image is still a record and suggests a generational habit.

Cuban says he pressed Trump on decisions as president that could cost lives. Trump said evangelicals handled his ground game. When Cuban raised an FBI iPhone privacy dispute, Trump would not engage. Cuban went on CNN and said Trump was not learning.

He doesn't make any effort to learn anything.

The break was not complete, he says. After the election he offered help, then visited the White House on replacing the ACA and discussed his "10 plan". In the pandemic he sent ideas to backstop bank and credit card accounts and worked with Peter Navarro on protective equipment. In the Oval Office, he says, Trump wanted to talk about money saved from Boeing rather than health care.

Cuban says he is not hostile to Trump personally, but does not think he was a good president. Asked for the weak points, he starts with the country's mood. He cites Trump's hateful tone and negative tweets about companies, including himself, which left businesses unsure what came next.

On the 2020 protests, he faults Trump's response, quoting his remark about looting, and claims more people died in riots during Trump's term than Biden's. Sacks objects that Trump cannot be blamed for the riots and says Walz refused the National Guard, and a host cites links between Democratic activists and BLM organizers. Cuban replies that he is judging how Trump handled it, not blaming him for the riots.

when the looting starts, the shooting starts