Mark Cuban: Love/Hate Relationship with Trump, Why He's Backing Kamala Harris

Cuban emphasizes he’s a lifelong independent who’s voted for both Republicans and Democrats, and says he would likely vote Republican if a non‑MAGA candidate were running. He frames his support for Kamala Harris as a relative choice: he believes Trump is unfit to be president again, particularly due to temperament, unwillingness to learn policy, and the way he destabilizes the country’s ‘vibe’ and institutions. For Cuban, this cycle is primarily about blocking Trump rather than endorsing a party.

Cuban lays out a specific (and controversial) causal chain: Trump’s 2019 decision to continue arms sales to Saudi Arabia in Yemen, then his 2020 deal brokering OPEC+ production cuts with MBS and Putin at the onset of COVID, substantially raised global oil prices as demand recovered while supply stayed constrained for two years. He insists this policy choice added non‑trivial upward pressure on gas prices, cascading into broader inflation, even while agreeing with Friedberg that money‑printing, fiscal stimulus, and supply chain shocks were also major drivers.

Cuban is blunt that the Biden administration badly mishandled the border initially and overspent in ways that contributed to inflation, and he concedes Biden’s cognitive slowdown is real in terms of reaction speed and debate performance. However, he resists assigning Kamala equal blame, arguing a vice president is fundamentally an employee who executes the president’s agenda, much like JD Vance will for Trump. He judges Kamala more on her current repositioning, her stated willingness to work with Republicans and independents, and her shift toward the political middle.

The group clashes over whether Kamala’s rhetoric on ICE and the wall, and her ‘border czar’ role, make her complicit in the border crisis. Cuban concedes the administration ‘opened the door too wide’ and created a cascading problem, but notes Biden later tightened asylum rules and worked with Mexico to reduce flows, bringing encounters back near pre‑pandemic Trump levels. Sacks counters that Kamala previously called the wall ‘un‑American,’ compared ICE to the KKK, and defended lax policies for years, arguing her newfound toughness is a poll‑driven pivot that hasn’t been rigorously challenged by the media.

Friedberg walks through the arithmetic: federal debt is ~35–36 trillion and rising, with about $10 trillion rolling over at higher rates and interest costs potentially hitting ~$1.6 trillion annually if debt approaches $40 trillion at ~4%. Cuban agrees both parties have been ‘wild spenders’ and says Harris’s team is aware that tax hikes alone can’t fix the gap due to diminishing returns. His emphasis in private conversations with them is on using AI and technology to increase government efficiency, lower healthcare and drug costs, and contain interest costs by getting inflation and rates down.