Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara.

My guest today is one of America’s most recognizable and outspoken entrepreneurs, Mark Cuban. Mark has never shied away from sharing bold opinions, often challenging the views of other business leaders. Now in an election season where economic policy is front-and-center, Mark has taken on a new role as a surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris in her quest for the White House.

Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Cuban:

Thanks for having me on, Preet. I’m a big fan. I’m excited to be on.

Preet Bharara:

I appreciate that. I want to just explain to folks how this came to be. With full candor, we tried to get Kamala Harris, we tried to get Tim Walz. They’re busy doing other stuff. They said to us, “Is there another surrogate that you would like?” I said, “Mark Cuban.”

Part of the reason for that is you’re an interesting person in this election cycle. You’re far from a left-wing, knee-jerk Democrat. You have conflicting views with a lot of people on the left. And you’re a powerful voice in the business in community. I appreciate you, or you’re speaking up, and the role you’ve played.

I want to start with your journey, as it were, Mark, with Donald Trump. I’m sure you get reminded of this all the time. Back in 2015, you said, “I don’t care what his actual positions are, I don’t care if he says the wrong thing, he says what’s on his mind. He gives honest answers, rather than prepared answers. This is more important than anything any candidate has done in years.” Then you recently said, “I actually started off supporting Donald, then I got to know him.” My question, Mark, is what does it feel like to be the reverse JD Vance?

Mark Cuban:

It feels good. Yeah. What I don’t tell people is I talked to JD when he thought he was Hitler, and he convinced me. No, just kidding. I don’t know JD Vance.

Preet Bharara:

What happened?

Mark Cuban:

I met Donald first, I think it was ’99 or 2000. ’98 or ’99. At Mar-a-Lago, at a Super Bowl party he’d threw. Nothing consequential. He invited me to help him understand the internet. I went to Trump Towers, and spent some time with him there. Again, inconsequential. Then in 2004, I had a TV show called The Benefactor, which went up against The Apprentice, and he kicked my butt. He took the liberty of talking to media, because there wasn’t social media, about how he kicked my butt. Which I was fine with, but it gave me an opportunity to have some fun, and respond to him.

Then when he started doing all of the birther-ism with Obama, and he was on Twitter, I started going back at him, and giving him a hard time, and all that kind of stuff. He started talking nonsense. It was fun. I didn’t care, it was fun. Then right around the same time, I was also on Shark Tank. I went in in 2011. That just gave me another foundation-

Preet Bharara:

Well, that was a pretty successful one.

Mark Cuban:

Yeah, that’s run pretty well. 15 years, 16 years for the show.

Fast-forward to 2015. I’ve always been apolitical. I’ve never gotten involved in politics. I’m an independent. Literally, I tried to vote, in many cases, for the candidate I thought would do the least, because I have a Libertarian edge to me. Then once I said that, that I thought, the quote you spoke of, he reached out to me, and started talking to me, and calling me a lot. We started going back and forth, and having conversations. “What do you think about this, this, this, and this?” Honestly, I never thought he would win. I’m not a Ted Cruz fan. I thought anything that would kick Ted Cruz out of the primaries, and there were 16 candidates. I thought there was no chance, much like other people.

But as I got to know him more, and tried to get him to engage as he won different primaries, I tried to get him engaged in policy. Whether it was tech, whether it was foreign policy, whatever it was, and he never would engage.

Preet Bharara:

Is that because he knows nothing about policy?

Mark Cuban:

Pretty much. Yeah. That’s what it came down to. I remember asking him, “If you win this thing, you’re going to have to make decisions where people could live or die based off of what you decide.” He wouldn’t respond.

There was the debate, and he didn’t participate. It was on CNBC. I’m like, “Why don’t you use this chance to go out and visit businesses, and let them know that you understand business?” He goes, “Mark, Mark Cuban and Donald Trump don’t go to people’s houses or dinner tables to have dinner with them.” I’m like, “Okay.”

Preet Bharara:

But you do.

Mark Cuban:

He didn’t see that one coming. As I tried to get other things out of him related to policy, there was just nothing there. The more he spoke out, the more that was obvious, the more the immigration stuff came out, and the more hateful came out. That’s just turned me.

Preet Bharara:

Why do people think that he has more specific policy proposals and understands policy, whether it’s economic policy or anything else, better than Kamala Harris? From what you say, what you said just now, is demonstrably true. He doesn’t know anything about policy.

Mark Cuban:

Yeah. The reason why is simple, he’s a great salesperson. We’ve all been in situations where there are products that we just think are lousy, but somebody does a great job selling them. Somebody’s got to sell pet rocks. Somebody’s got to sell Beanie Babies. In essence, it sounds kind of crazy, but it’s almost like the Beanie Baby craze, where people started saying, “Oh, these are valuable, they’re collectibles, they’re cute.”

Preet Bharara:

But that fades after time. This guy has a stable constituency.

Mark Cuban:

Yeah. But the difference is people actually put up money for a Beanie Baby. With Donald Trump, he doesn’t ask for anything other than votes or just your attention.

Preet Bharara:

Well, he sells $100,000 watches.

Mark Cuban:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

And some other stuff.

Mark Cuban:

That tells you something right there. I had mentioned going back and forth with him on Twitter. I used to just destroy him on Twitter about those things. It’s like, “Why are you selling Trump steaks? Why are you selling Trump water? Why are you selling Trump vodka?” It’s because you have to. Why are you now selling Trump watches? Why are you selling Trump cologne? Why are you selling Trump commemorative coins? Why are you doing this D5 project? Because he has to. The man is so intent on whatever he can do to put more cash in the bank because he needs the cash. He’d never, ever … If you just look at his FEC filings, I have a good understanding about what it costs him to keep up his lifestyle, he can’t afford it. That’s a major problem for him.

I personally think that drives a lot of his approach to this, and drives a lot of his interest, because this is the one place where you don’t really have to ask for money, other people do it for you. You can pick the piggy bank of everybody out there.

Preet Bharara:

Well, it’s interesting that he purports to be a billionaire multiple times over, and barely puts any of his own money where his mouth is. Usually, people of his caliber, in terms of stated wealth, put their money where their mouth is, like Mike Bloomberg and others. That tells you something too, right?

Mark Cuban:

Oh, for sure. Not only in terms of the campaign, but also his approach to hardworking Americans. From Trump University, to Trump Soho. There was a time when he was, during the Stormy Daniels stuff when Michael Cohen testified. If you’ll remember, Michael Cohen started talking about how Trump encouraged him to short pay vendors. Any other business person on the planet, when that was stated, at the time Donald did his little impromptu press conferences would have said, “No, I never said that. I don’t do that.” He never said any of that. He didn’t deny any of it.

Then just recently, just the other day in Michigan, when there was an audio outage, a 17-minute audio outage, he literally said about the contractor, or company, or the service provider, whoever it was that was doing the audio, that he wouldn’t pay them and he might sue them.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Mark Cuban:

To me, that’s part of the message I try to get out there. That’s how much he respects the American people. That’s how much he cares for hardworking Americans. That’s what guides his policy.

Preet Bharara:

As a member of the business community generally, I know the business community’s not monolithic, but there are entrepreneurs, there are old-style business people in different industries. There’s tech, there’s pharmaceuticals, et cetera. How have people reacted in the business world, in the finance world to your outspokenness against Trump? Have you lost any friends?

Mark Cuban:

They’re thanking me. Because Kamala, for all of your strengths, and understanding of policy, because she’s only been in the race for 13 weeks, you can’t cover everything.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Mark Cuban:

Particularly when you’re trying to make up a deficit and win an election, and go into the swing states. The people at a rally don’t want to hear about tax on unrealized capital gains. The people at rallies, they don’t want to hear the nuances of her tax plans and how it impacts business. Real business people want to know about that. They want to know that there’s not going to be a tax on unrealized capital gains because they know that that would be devastating.

Even though-

Preet Bharara:

But you’re saying that’s not going to happen.

Mark Cuban:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

What’s the basis? Because Biden said that he wanted to do that, Kamala has not?

Mark Cuban:

No. When Joe Biden first released it, it was part of his 2024 budget. I called them up. I’m like, “Look, I hate Trump, I’m supporting Joe. How can you put this in?” They were like, “Look, we need it for the CBO to make all the numbers balance. It was there for that purpose, it’s not going to happen.” Then when Kamala says she supported the budget, it was the same question. She said she supported it. Well, I called them up and they were like, “No, it was just there,” they told me the exact same thing.

Then the next question becomes, “Well, how do you know she’s not going to fully support what’s in the budget?” The obvious is in her tax proposal. Joe wanted a much higher tax rate on corporations and on capital gains. Kamala came out in the middle, at 28% for both. That shows you that she is different than Joe Biden’s budget proposal. It wasn’t a stretch for me to say, and for the campaign to confirm to me, that there’s not going to be a tax on unrealized gains.

For those people within the campaign that weren’t sure, I explained it to them. If you do that, all investors … I realized there’s $100 million threshold, but it affects everybody downstream. That’s why investors were concerned because anybody who invests a lot of money in others, there’s a lot of uncertainty and risk, and a lack of liquidity often. If you are facing the stock market that goes straight up, you’re going to have to retain a lot of cash, a lot of cash. Even if it’s not a stock market going straight up, if it’s a liquid investment of yours that’s going up, you’re going to have to retain a lot of cash. When you retain a lot of cash, it’s the riskiest investments that you typically make that go first.

Preet Bharara:

Right. It’s a big problem.

Mark Cuban:

Those are the investments they don’t make. Who are the people who need those investments the most, that have the hardest time getting them? Women, people of color. Those are going to be the first investments to go.

Second part to that is the stock market, which I know you’re very familiar with. You’ve seen the number of public companies decline as is. I took my company public in 1998. I was cash poor, stock rich. In that unrealized capital gains environment, I either would have sell enough stock that I would have lost my majority control, or I would have had to borrow against it. Now all of a sudden, because my company was doing well in the stock market, I was in debt up to my eyeballs for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. You convinced me. You had me at unrealized gain.

Here’s something else that you’ve said that’s interesting. During this campaign, Trump keeps calling Kamala Harris a socialist, even a communist. You have said, “She’s not the socialist, it’s the other guy.” Can you explain that?

Mark Cuban:

Donald Trump has come out and asked for caps on interest rates for credit cards. That’s a perfect example of Socialism 101.

Preet Bharara:

It strikes me that that might be popular in the widespread areas of America.

Mark Cuban:

Oh, I’m not saying it’s not. Those two things can be true. You could be a socialist and have a policy that is popular. That is really what I focused on. There’s other things, like his sovereign wealth fund, despite us having debt. It just won’t work. It’s impossible. There are other areas where he’s tried to put price controls on minimal things.

Their initial response to Kamala talking about price gouging, which by the law is a law in 37 states, with, “Oh, no, it’s a price cap.” Which it wasn’t, of course. It only was during crises. Here he was, coming up with a cap on interest rates that might be popular, but would destroy credit for the people who have the hardest time getting it.

Preet Bharara:

Can you explain something to me about the technology community? I know, again, that’s not monolithic. But there’s reporting and anecdotal evidence that the tech community has a lot of supporters for Trump, particularly in the crypto area. How is it that an aging Luddite who claims to have never sent an email is popular, or could be popular, in the tech community?

Mark Cuban:

He’s very transactional. That says it all. He doesn’t care about crypto. He doesn’t care about technology. He doesn’t care about AI. But he certainly cares about people with a lot of money.

Preet Bharara:

What is he telling them, to get the money?

Mark Cuban:

Look at what he did with Bitcoin. You had a lot of … They call them Bitcoin Maxis, the people who think that the only real crypto is Bitcoin, and everything else is what they call shit coins. Those people who are hardcore proponents basically say, “We’re going to give you a lot of money to your campaign. In exchange, we want you to put Bitcoin in the Treasury as an alternative to the gold that’s held by the Treasury.” He didn’t care. He didn’t know one way or the other, so he said yes.

Now what he didn’t talk about, and conversations I’ve had with the Harris campaign, is there truly is a big groundswell of crypto ownership in young men, of people of color, white, green, everybody. The reason that happened, is particularly with lower income men, is they really don’t have access to traditional banking, like you and I did when we were growing up. It used to be it was a right-of-passage to have a checking account, and a savings account, and write your first check. We were all proud about it. But now, because of minimum balances, and because of fees, that’s almost impossible.

What’s happening, and those young men in particular have evolved to get into the app economy. They’ll download Robin Hood, and they’ll download Coinbase, and they’re competitors. They’ll put $26 on Dogecoin. In their mind, they just bought $26 worth of Dogecoin at 10 cents each, or Ethereum, or Bitcoin, XRP, any of the many crypto options. In their mind, that is their future net worth. That’s how they’re going to buy their next car. That’s how they might get a down payment on a home.

When the initial response to that by the Biden Administration was basically ignorance of it, everybody was like, “Okay, Trump’s the one.”

Preet Bharara:

But Kamala Harris, who comes from the Bay Area, and has technologists and others in her constituency for a long time, is different from that, is different from Biden on that score or not.

Mark Cuban:

For sure. Yeah, 100%. Basically, she has her core values. One of those core values is protecting and supporting people who are less advantaged, and don’t have access to the banking system. In talking to myself and a lot of those people over there, including somebody like Ben Horowitz who initially showed support for Trump and now said he’s also offering money to the Harris campaign, she got to understand the frailties of the banking system and how these people, just like I explained, really need access to to crypto. That got her to be able to say, I forget which speech it was, but that she’ll support and protect people who own digital assets.

In another speech in Pittsburgh she said, “You know what, blockchain is a valid technology that we need to encourage here in the United States, because one of the things that makes our economy so great and makes us the destination for entrepreneurs is that we’re the home of almost every great new technology. We can’t lose that with blockchain out of there.” I think a lot of the folks that she knows in Silicon Valley explained that to her.

To go back to your point about why Trump is getting support, remember, a lot of that support in general from Silicon Valley started while Biden was the candidate. Biden had no interest in talking to Silicon Valley whatsoever. That really backfired on him. Kamala, on the other hand, particularly since Tony West, her brother-in-law has worked as the GC at Uber, has tons of connections there. She, as you said, from the Silicon Valley, represented Silicon Valley, knows people there. She has those context, and I think she’s transitioned a lot of those people over to supporting her. Not Elon and not some others.

Preet Bharara:

Right. Not Elon, that’s for sure. I want to talk about tariffs, before you go to go?

Mark Cuban:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

Trump has been promoting this wacky idea, per every expert that has any kind of understanding of this at all, with respect to China, and then across the board with every other country. Your Shark Tank cohost tweeted in support of some of this tariff policy that is being advanced by Donald Trump. You replied on Twitter, I think, “Hey, Kev, 1929 called. They want their tariff policies back.”

My question is, if you want to address that, but do Trump voters not believe the experts who say this will dramatically increase inflation?

Mark Cuban:

No, they don’t.

Preet Bharara:

Or do they not believe Trump is really planning to do this?

Mark Cuban:

They believe him when he says he’s using this as a negotiating tool. They don’t go back, they have Trumpnesia. They don’t go back to 2019, when he did the same thing, and not even as Draconian as he’s proposing now, and it backfired on him. It put farmers out of business. He had to take whatever tariff revenue that American importers paid, and give that to soybean farmers and others. China basically saw him coming, and just hurt us. They think it’s just a negotiating tool and don’t understand the implications.

That’s one of the reasons why, when I go out, I try to put it in context of small businesses and families. For instance, so many of our products that we buy at Christmas are imported from China. From shoes, to clothing, to backpacks, to sporting goods, et cetera. If he puts an across-the-board tariff of 60%, those products are going up at least 60%. What that means is families are going to have to make decisions about what they buy for Christmas. Can they afford to buy as much as they did in the past? When that happens, not only do the families suffer, but all of those businesses, the dress shop down the street, the knickknack store where you buy your favorite candles that are imported, all of those small businesses suffer.

As we saw during 2019, many of those businesses went out business. I try to just get that point across so it hits home that tariffs aren’t some esoteric thing that are negotiated. They’re things that truly will affect your Christmas next year if Trump wins. That’s why I called him the Trump that stole Christmas.

Preet Bharara:

Right. How can business people operate in an environment in which a sitting President of the United States can, in a fit of peak, single out a particular company by name, in this case recently John Deer, and say, “If they take some action,” they want to produce part of their machinery in Mexico, that he would “whack them with a 200% tariff.” How do business people that you know think that it’s okay to have that kind of uncertainty and vindictiveness in the air to any possible moment?

Mark Cuban:

They hate it.

Preet Bharara:

How is that good?

Mark Cuban:

They hate it.

Preet Bharara:

And yet, a lot of people in the business community, they love the guy. Is it just about taxes and they don’t care about the uncertainty?

Mark Cuban:

No. I think it’s not about the uncertainty or the taxes, it’s just they don’t know Kamala yet. That’s it, in a nutshell. To realize that, in the 13 weeks she’s been in the race, to come from having negative favorables, and to be basically just taking over Biden’s positioning, and to come all the way here where we’re a dead heat, that’s amazing. Historians were right about that and say, “That’s just incredible.” There are going to be people that don’t fully understand where she’s coming from. Is she far left? Does she represent Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren?

Which is one of the reasons they have me out there, talking to businesses, talking to you, and getting them to understand that no. She is a centrist. She’s caring. She’s empathetic. She’s pragmatic. She’s open-minded. She’s not dogmatic. She’s not an ideologue. What that means is she is going to be good for your business.

One of the other things I say, Preet, and this really resonates. There are 33 million companies in this country. 99% of them are Subchapter S, LLCs, or solo enterprise, meaning they all pay their taxes based on their personal income tax. Of those 99%, probably 99% of them make $400,000 or less. Which means that, for 99% of businesses out there, and the entrepreneurs and CEOs that run them, their taxes are not going up, and most likely going down. Once I start letting them realize that, just realize your own personal circumstances, she is really good for your business. There’s stability, and all the other things we’ve talked about, no tariffs.

Then it starts to resonate with them, and they get that Donald Trump really only cares about big business. There are only 20,000 companies with 500 or more employees. When he talks about reducing taxes from 21% to potentially 15% if you manufacture here, or bring manufacturing here, or whatever it may be, that affects so few companies. But if there are tariffs involved, when you do the math, the tariffs plus his tax rate is far more expensive to the larger businesses than 28% coming from Kamala Harris.

Preet Bharara:

Final question, Mark, that I have to ask you before I let you go. In your mind, who do you find more annoying, Bill Ackman, or the SEC Chair Gary Gensler?

Mark Cuban:

That’s top three questions I have ever been asked. That’s great.

Preet Bharara:

You got to pick one. By the way, I have no opinion of anyone, or these two gentlemen. I’m asking you your opinion.

Mark Cuban:

I’m not even going to put you on the spot. I would definitely say Ackman’s more annoying, but obviously Gary Gensler probably has more of an impact on the election, unfortunately.

Preet Bharara:

Do you want to take his spot?

Mark Cuban:

No, absolutely not. I’ve got a company called Costplusdrugs.com, that is just turning the pharmaceutical industry upside down. We’re cutting medication costs for families. Especially generic drugs, drugs that people were paying $2000, or self-insured companies were paying $2000 a month for, our price is $21 a month.

The opacity in the pharmaceutical industry is so distinct that nobody knows what the price of medications are. We started costplusdrugs.com. You go in, we don’t carry them all, we carry 2500 so far. You put in the name of it. When it comes up, we’ll show you our actual cost, our actual, verifiable cost. Our markup is only 15%, we’ll show you that. Then if it’s mail order, we’ll show you our pharmacy fee and the shipping fee. If it’s local pickup, we’ll show you the fee that goes to the local pharmacy. We end up being dramatically cheaper.

To me, we didn’t go into healthcare at all, but Kamala and her team, to their credit, has really undertaken a lot of study. To Lina Kahn, to her credit, she took on the PBMs. By taking on the PBMs, I think Kamala, with her programs that she’s already talked about … Kamala has talked about dealing with the PBMs and transparency. That alone will cut the cost of medications for families, and eventually all of healthcare, enough to more than offset any inflationary impact on families that we’ve seen the last four years.

Preet Bharara:

Mark Cuban, hopefully you’ll come back for a full hour at some point?

Mark Cuban:

For sure, for sure.

Preet Bharara:

Keep up your voice. Keep up your voice, you’re appreciated.

Mark Cuban:

I’m trying, Preet. Thanks for all you do.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines, become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I host with former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Threads. Or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, Stay Tuned.