If
you want to know just how surreal things have gotten, consider this: In
2015, Donald Trump had to decide between playing the president in
“Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!” and running to be the actual president.
And it wasn’t an easy choice.
A
“Sharknado” producer got tired of waiting for Trump — he was the second
choice, after Sarah Palin turned down the gig — to sign his contract.
So the role was offered to Mark Cuban and Trump’s lawyer threatened to
sue, the producer told The Hollywood Reporter.
Cuban
ended up in the cinematic White House with the sharks circling, and Ann
Coulter as his veep, and Trump ended up in the real White House with
the sharks circling, and Ann Coulter as his frenemy.
“I think it’s funny as hell, yeah,” Cuban says with a grin.
Maybe
deploying a shotgun and grenades to save the White House from a shower
of sharks — while simultaneously starring on “Shark Tank” — gave Cuban
the scent of chum in the Potomac. He puts the odds that he will
challenge his fellow loud billionaire, master salesman and reality TV
star in 2020 at 10 percent — “maybe 11.”
“I’m
considering it, yes,” he tells me. “I would put the odds against it
right now for family reasons, but there is still plenty of time.”
Continue reading the main story
A
few weeks after Trump took office, The New York Post reported that
Steve Bannon had identified Cuban as the No. 1 threat for 2020 because
he could appeal to Republicans and independents.
“Bannon is a smart man,” smiles Cuban, who has huddled with the strategist.
I
met the voluble owner of the Dallas Mavericks at Jean-Georges in the
Trump hotel at Columbus Circle, where he keeps an apartment. It seemed a
bit dicey to be discussing a possible coup at the same elegant eatery
where the president-elect tortured Mitt Romney by dangling the secretary
of state job over sautéed frogs’ legs.
But
Cuban is nothing if not brazen. He ambles into the three-star Michelin
restaurant in his usual jeans and Adidas kicks, wearing a T-shirt
someone had sent him that read “Stronger Than Lions.”
When
I ask if he would run as an independent, he replies: “Probably, or a
Republican. I’m registered as an independent. I mean, I’d rather do it
as an independent.” But running as an independent has not proved
successful in modern times. You just become a spoiler like Ross Perot.
(Who is Cuban’s neighbor in Dallas, along with W.)
Cuban epitomizes a tantalizing question: Will Trump’s election open the floodgates to celebrities who are thinking, “Wow, if that dude
can do it…,” and who can titillate the media by delivering what Cuban
calls “headline porn,” or will it send voters scurrying back to more
traditional pols?
The
59-year-old, who got rich with one of the first online streaming
companies, has been described as “Trump without the crazy.” He calls
Trump batty but has also written that it’s good to have “the edge,” when
“people think you’re crazy and they are right, but you don’t care what
they think.”
He
gives free rein to his goofball side. He once bought a six-month supply
of toilet paper at a store in Dallas to hedge against inflation. “I
order 36 tubes of Theodent toothpaste at a time and they just stack up,”
he says. “When I buy razor blades, I buy a load of them because it
doesn’t take much space and they’re expensive.”
He
also confesses to having been naked in front of his computer, hitting
the refresh button, waiting for his stock price to reach the point where
he was a billionaire — a moment recreated by Cuban’s mentally unhinged
doppelgänger on HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” Russ Hanneman.
“Look,
there are people who are saying we don’t need another business person,”
he says, sipping iced tea. “But it’s about what you do with it, what
you learn, what you can contribute and what value you can add. I’d want
to come in with proof of an agenda, ‘Here’s a health care solution and
I’ve already paid my own money to have it scored.’
“They
always say that people vote against what they didn’t like about the
previous president, right? And I think he’s so ineffective, people will
look for somebody who can get something done who’s not a politician. If
that’s a celebrity, that’s just an easier platform to work from. The
best example is tax reform, right?”
He
says he would call the top 5,000 profitable companies and say: If I’m
going to give you a 20 percent corporate tax rate, I’m going to need a
commitment from you that you’re going to increase the wages of your
lowest-paid workers.
“If you did that,” he says, “you’d be a hero.”
Asked if he would send the Mavericks’ former player Dennis Rodman to negotiate with Little Rocket Man, he replies, “Why not?”
Trump
and Cuban are testosterone twins in some ways. Both savor poking elites
and flouting convention. Both have owned sports teams and love making
movie and TV cameos. Both say the government has conspired against them,
Trump with the Deep State and Cuban when he fended off insider-trading
charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2008.
But
Cuban is more charitable. He recently lent his jet to the Mavericks’
point guard J. J. Barea to take emergency supplies to Puerto Rico. He is
also fairer in business. Forbes said that on “Shark Tank,” Cuban had
the best record of following through with the terms of a deal.
He
is more reflective than Trump. In a 2012 blog post, he wrote that he
regretted cracking a gay joke in an interview: “I think being the person
I want to be includes not blurting out throwaway jokes about sexuality,
race, ethnicity, size, disability or other things people have no say in
about themselves.”
In
2014 he came under pressure for a comment perceived as racially
insensitive, saying while discussing bigotry, “If I see a black kid in a
hoodie and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the
street,” and if he sees a white guy who “has tattoos all over his face,”
he’d do the same. He apologized to the family of Trayvon Martin.
But
Cuban can empathize with Trump. “If you just put on the eyes of a sales
guy and an entrepreneur who struggled a lot, that’s Donald Trump,”
Cuban says. “He’s overselling all the time. Most people when they sell,
they try to solve problems. Donald Trump is not a problem solver. Never
was. Never will be. To Donald Trump, people are fungible. Where’s the
list of entrepreneurs who say, ‘He mentored me, he helped me, he
invested in me’?”
I
note that Trump has trolled us both on Twitter, calling me a “neurotic
dope” and Cuban an “arrogant, crude, dope” who is “not smart enough to
run for president.”
“There
are three Donald Trumps,” he says. “Donald Trump, the president. Donald
Trump, the salesperson. Donald Trump, the troll. Trolls are going to
troll.” Trump’s Twitter personality, Cuban says, is just like a guy
“screaming at a sporting event.” (He himself has paid the N.B.A.
hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for screaming courtside.)
Cuban
said during the primaries that he would accept a position as Hillary’s
running mate or Trump’s. “I wasn’t a Hillary fan, by the way,” he says,
but he was less of a Donald fan, so he campaigned for her and sat in the
front row for the first debate.
Cuban likes to say whining is underrated, but what did he think of Hillary blaming Comey, Sanders, Obama, Biden, Putin?
“They
didn’t see it coming at all,” he says of the arrogant Clinton camp. “I
remember right before the election, they invited me to the party in
Brooklyn. I’m like, are you kidding me? You do not plan the parade
before you win the championship.
“In
sports, matchups matter, right? Hillary was prepared to have a
policy-against-policy matchup against a politician. She was not prepared
to have a matchup against a movement.”
He
scoffs: “The Russians had no effect on the election. Look, if you
spotted Donald Trump two pieces of bread and behind him was a
refrigerator full of ham, he couldn’t collude with the Russians to make a
ham sandwich. Right?”
Since
both he and Trump had shows produced by Mark Burnett, I wonder if Cuban
had ever pressed the producer to hand over that alleged compilation
tape from “The Apprentice” with Trump’s sexist and racist comments. Yes,
Cuban says, but Burnett told him he didn’t have such a tape.
His
friendly relations with Trump frayed amid the campaign trolling. “Last
time I talked to him was via email when he asked me why I went negative
on him,” Cuban says. “And I sent him an email back saying, ‘At some
point, you have to learn the issues.’ Does he really understand the ins
and outs of health care? No, he mixes health insurance up with life
insurance, right?” He sent Trump a congratulations email after he got
elected, but has had no further contact.
Still,
he says he would serve as a tech adviser to the White House if asked.
“If China and Russia are able to advance their A.I. further than ours,”
he says, “they’re going to kick our ass.”
Cuban
always says he’s lucky and his anthem is Joe Walsh’s “Life’s Been
Good.” He lives in a Dallas mansion with five wet bars, three kids and
his wife, Tiffany, whom he describes as a “smart, funny and beautiful”
and “a badass.” His wife lets him live like Tom Hanks in “Big.” “We’ve
got a basketball dribble machine and there is a basketball court in the
ballroom,” he says.
He
did well, I say, with his samba to the “I Dream of Jeannie” theme on
“Dancing With the Stars,” especially given that he had just had hip
replacement surgery.
“I told my wife,” he says, “I don’t want to look back and say I would’ve, could’ve, should’ve.”
Maybe that’s what Cuban is thinking about 2020.
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