Mark Cuban was once flying high—really high. He was the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, where he usually made himself the center of attention and stepped in front of every camera he could find, he was a stalwart on the popular investment/entrepreneur show “Shark Tank,” and he was a billionaire as the result of an astute deal in 1999 where he sold his streaming audio startup called Broadcast.com early in the internet age to Yahoo, making him insanely wealthy overnight.
He’s still super rich, but his image took some major hits in 2024 when he backed the abysmal Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris and made a series of buffoonish statements that made people question his supposed superior intellect. Meanwhile, he sold his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks in 2023 and is now only a minority owner, and was stunned like many sports fans to see the team controversially trade one of its most popular players ever, Luka Doncic.
He’s not riding so high now after watching his preferred candidate get crushed at the polls, losing seven swing states, the electoral vote and the popular vote.
But did he learn anything from his journey? Apparently not, at least according to his comments at the (trainwreck) "Principles First” summit for “anti-Trump conservatives” in Washington, D.C., Saturday. He thinks the Democrats' failure is due to marketing, not due to the fact that a majority of Americans finally realized that progressive politics have failed at every level, from blue states like the former Golden State of California to the inept White House of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden:
Mark Cuban admitted this weekend that "Democrats can’t sell" and that President Donald Trump is a master at marketing, saying he is better than Paris Hilton and Dennis Rodman.
Cuban, who during the 2024 presidential campaign served as one of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ top allies and campaign surrogates, also revealed he told Harris advisors to "not even try" advising him on messaging.
"Donald Trump is a great salesperson, he really is a great marketer," he said.
Motioning with his hands, Cuban continued: "I’d put him up there, Donald Trump, then Paris Hilton, then Dennis Rodman."
The comparison drew laughs from the crowd at the "Principles First" summit in Washington, D.C., to which Cuban responded, "Seriously!"
"I mean those two below are some of the best marketers I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and Donald Trump surpassed them," he said.
Watch if you must:
Lost the Plot: A Man of Principle: Mark Cuban Busy Deleting All His Pro-Kamala Harris Tweets
Priceless: Women Let Mark Cuban Have It After He Said No 'Strong, Intelligent Women' Around Trump
Memo to Mark Cuban: Paris Hilton and Dennis Rodman might be great marketers (which is arguable), but they're not going to win the presidency of the United States. What he completely misses is that this monumental victory was about policy, not personality—and not "messaging."
But he wasn’t done:
"I learned that Democrats can’t sell worth s---," he laughed, according to other clips that surfaced from the weekend summit. "They’re so persnickety about every little detail, and that’s why Republicans at the presidential level — I don’t want to say kicked their a-- because it wasn’t a runaway — but yeah."
Cuban said that Democrats "had no idea" how to communicate their policies to moderates and small business owners.
"If you gave the Democrats a dollar bill and said: ‘You can sell these for 50 cents,’ they would hire 50 people to try to do it and then would not know how to sell the dollar bill for 50 cents," he continued. "If you gave it to Donald Trump and said, ‘Sell this dollar bill for $2,’ he’d figure out a way, right? He’d tell you that $2 bill is, you know, huge. … That’s the problem, and that’s what I learned."
Again, he completely misses the mark: it’s not that Democrats can’t sell, it’s that what they’re selling sucks.
This hot take didn’t age well—he should ask Attorney General Pam Bondi, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles what they think of these remarks:
DISGUSTING: Top Kamala surrogate Mark Cuban says no "strong, intelligent women" support President Trump.
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 31, 2024
They're now openly attacking the millions of strong, intelligent women fighting alongside President Trump every day to Make America Great Again.
Will @KamalaHQ disavow? pic.twitter.com/5sPihbzJ8t
Cuban in his heyday seemed like an interesting guy; he was provocative and enormously successful, and even though he was constantly grandstanding as the one-time Mavericks owner, he brought interest to the team and to the NBA, and he had a loyal following on "Shark Tank."
With his unfortunate turn to Team Woke, however, he is more often a punchline these days than the subject of serious discussion.
