WASHINGTON – Billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told PJM he’s not concerned about the opposition research being conducted by the Super PAC America Rising in anticipation of his potential presidential run, adding that voters can find “pretty much” everything about him with Google searches.
Cuban revealed that he “certainly” would not run for president as a Democrat or a Republican in 2020.
“I know everything I’ve done, you know. More power to them. I’ll be curious to see what they find,” Cuban said during an interview after his appearance at the High School Leadership Summit organized by Turning Point USA on Tuesday.
“Hey, more power to them, right? I doubt they’re going to spend a whole lot of time on me. All you’ve got to do is Google me and pretty much you can find everything so, hey, more power to them,” he added.
Cuban, who endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, was also asked if he thinks New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s democratic socialist policy positions are beneficial for the future of the Democratic Party.
“I could care less what happens to the Democratic Party. I could care less what happens to the Republican Party, I could care less what happens to the Green Party or the Libertarian Party, any of the parties – if they all disappeared, I’d be happy. I think, you know, what’s missing is a little bit more democracy for our republic, where what people think or what constituents want is listened to more and drives what politicians do more, so it’s more bottom-up than top-down,” replied Cuban, an investor on the hit ABC show Shark Tank.
“So, you know, if she can get a following and her constituents like her, great, that’s the whole idea. If they don’t, great, people will vote for somebody else. But I think what’s most important is that people – that’s why I’m here, you’ve got 800 high school kids that are going to be our future leaders or even our current leaders, and just giving them diverse opinions and letting them learn how to learn, I think it’s critical,” he added.
In late October last year, Cuban said he would probably run for president as a Republican if he decided to enter the 2020 race, but also floated the idea of running as an independent. On Tuesday, Cuban told PJM that he would not run on the GOP or Democratic ticket.
“I certainly wouldn’t run as a Democrat or Republican, so, if I ran, which, it’s a long shot,” Cuban said.
During his appearance at the Turning Point USA summit, Cuban promoted his healthcare plan, which taxpayers would fund with up to 8 percent of their annual income. Cuban told PJM that the feedback from Republicans and Democrats about his plan has been positive.
“Yeah, absolutely, oh, everybody’s really positive about it. I mean, look, it’s repeal and replace, they love it, the Democrats I’ve spoken to, they love it because it covers all 47 million people, it gives everybody a first-dollar opportunity to get healthcare. It covers those people who have had horrific injuries or have had genetic issues, you know, where they have chronic illnesses, so everybody can do it in a way that’s affordable plus you get the opportunity to leverage the free markets so that, you know, you can go to the right doctor,” Cuban said.
“If you can afford to pay a little bit more you can buy insurance, if that’s a better economic move for you, or you could go to a doctor that maybe you pay above and beyond what the 8 percent program would allow you to do. So, you know, all the feedback has been really positive. The hard part has just been getting it to the [Trump] administration,” he added.
When asked if Republicans have expressed concern about his proposal for a national single-payer healthcare system for catastrophic coverage, Cuban replied, “No not really, I mean, a single-payer system, it’s not that it’s wrong, it’s just that it’s the best default, it’s the best of all the bad options. And so when you’re trying to get healthcare for as many people as possible, it’s certainly something you want to consider but that doesn’t make it the best solution. And so what we’ve put together, we think, is a far better solution that covers more people, gives better healthcare, gives better outcomes for less cost.”
During Cuban’s onstage discussion with Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, the investor applauded President Trump for “always challenging the status quo.”
“The one thing I’ll give him credit for, and he’s the only president ever really to have done this, and I think it’s because he’s a business guy at heart and I’m hoping that each and every one of you adopt this approach: He always challenges the status quo, always,” he said to the students in the audience. “I do give President Trump tons of credit for always challenging the status quo, and if each and every one of you took that same approach, you might not identify yourselves as center-right, center-left, center-up, center-down, center-purple, center-green, but just as curious.”
Cuban said the conservative agenda is “completely different” than it was four years ago.
“Night and day, and it’s because he challenged the status quo on almost everything, for better or worse. If each and every one of you take President Trump, in my opinion, his best quality, you wouldn’t pre-identify yourselves as anything, you would say, let’s just go break shit.”
Cuban said he’s “very different” from Trump because he does not surround himself only with people who agree with him.
“I like to go to places where people disagree with me,” he said. “I don’t know, necessarily, that the president, at least in my experiences with him, is the type to dig into the details at all, and that’s where we diverge.”
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