Billionaire Mark Cuban Says 2020 White House Run Could Happen Under Certain Conditions
Mark Cuban refuses to say quite yet whether 2020 will be a battle of the billionaires between the Dallas Mavericks owner and President Donald Trump.
“I said I’m not ruling it out, but the tea leaves would have to align perfectly,” Cuban said according to Fox News.
Cuban spoke to the Daily News Monday night about the 2020 election and other topics.
“I haven’t decided anything yet. We’ll see what happens. It all comes down to how things play out,” he said, noting that he would neither want nor need a party affiliation if he decides to run.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty with what’s going on with the Mueller report, there’s a lot of things that have to be figured out before we know how 2020 is going to play out. But it’s something that if circumstances were right I would do.”
If Cuban runs, he could join billionaire Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, as business leaders in the race. Internal polling released by Schultz showed him in a strong position as opposed to several Democratic candidates.
Cuban assessed the crowded Democratic field.
“If you look at the Democrats right now, there’s like a democratic gravity that pulls all the candidates to the same point. And it’s very difficult to show leadership in a situation like that because you can’t truly lead if you have to find an equilibrium between being a true leader for the people of your country versus getting elected in your primary. None of those things are conducive to out-and-out leading the country,” he said.
“You can see it right now with the Democrats. They’re pushing hard for Democratic votes, but they’re doing nothing to try to bring Independent and Republican voters aboard,” Cuban said.
Although Cuban was not necessarily previewing a platform, he said that the critical piece too often missing in the lives of Americans is hope — economic hope.
“Too many people give up because they do not see a light at the end of the tunnel,” Cuban said.
“One of the biggest risks and greatest expenses this country could ever face beyond a really bad war is that people will rebel, and we will have social unrest, because they think their circumstances are just untenable and it’s only going to get worse. That’s when people rebel,” he said.
Bland, standard answers will not fill the void, he said.
“You have to show people how they can have an upside and how problems are solvable, but you can’t just say ‘the government will figure it out.’ You’ve got to get right to the heart of the matter and get to the details first. Sort of like a business plan. That way every voter can see them.”
Cuban said he has no interest in starting a political party.
“There can’t be another party, because parties are parties and have the same politics … whether they are a new start-up party or a start-up, they’re all going to have their own internal politics. So the idea of just starting a third party, that has been tried time and time for 200 years, and so that defeats the purpose and actually makes things worse and not better. Just adding one more party does not change that,” he said.
Cuban — who at one time was a Trump fan but later became a critic — said that despite the fact that he believes Trump has not succeeded as a president has not diminished the allure of an anti-politician in the eyes of the voters.
“People weren’t voting for (Trump in 2016) because he was calling people names, they were voting for him because he was not a politician, and he was demonstrating to everyone that he wasn’t a politician,” Cuban said. “A big chunk of voters, Republican voters, still want someone who is not a politician. And you’re not getting that from anyone in the Democratic Party.”
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