An American billionaire who has previously expressed his desire to buy Fox News and “run basketball” for an NBA team he once had a billions-worth stake in has not particularly been a fan of wanting to run for US president. However, the very man who also recently offered help to Elon Musk for his America Party has now pitched that he may be up for the challenge on one Donald Trump-shaped condition. The man in question is none other than video portal Broadcast.com co-founder and former Kamala Harris campaign surrogate Mark Cuban.
The businessman best known for his role as a former Shark Tank investor reiterated on Friday that he had no plans to run for presidency for the forthcoming 2028 term. Having long been hopeful for the Democratic brand, Cuban has suffered his share of disappointment with that alignment. While he’s repeatedly turned away from the possibility of entering politics, the political outsider recently changed his tone to some extent.
Mark Cuban to run for president? Here’s what the billionaire has said
“I’m not going to do it,” he told Ben Smith on the ‘Semafor’ podcast. Despite rejecting the notion, he went on to say, “I’ve said the only way I would do it is if Trump tried to run for a third term. Because then that’s just changing everything, right? And that’s a true threat.”
“But other than that, I’m not going to put my family through that, you know?” the billionaire investor asserted, adding that he wanted to avoid any and all form of “grief and abuse” that was associated with running for the post. Highlighting that his three kids were currently between the ages of 15 and 21, he continued, “When I’m 95 and taking – or 105 and taking my last breaths, rights? I don’t want to say, ‘Well, gee, I ran for president. Maybe won, maybe didn’t.'”
He instead seemed to have some other potential candidates in mind who would fit the role. Shunning “traditional politicians,” he positioned Jon Stewart, Texas state Rep James Talarico and Scott Galloway as people who he could see running for the 2028 term.
In a previous interaction with Tara Palmeri on the podcast ‘Somebody’s Gotta Win,’ Cuban vaguely gave into the idea of running for office as a Republican. “I wouldn’t run at all, but if I did, it’d be a whole lot more fun to run as a Republican,” he said earlier this year. “Because in four years, it’ll be a different world, and who knows where people’s allegiances lie. You know, the Republican Party of 10 years ago was nothing like the Republican Party of today.”
Despite his former Democratic alliances, Mark Cuban insisted that he was “not a fan of either party.” However, he believed that entering the race as a Republican would grant him the “path of least resistance.” He issued a similar response in 2017 while taking to Fox News.
Back in June 2020, he told CNN that he was eyeing the possibility to run for president as an independent candidate that year. His family, however, “voted it down,” causing him to drop the idea altogether.
Mark Cuban’s net worth is…
According to Forbes, the Shark Tank star has a net worth of $6 billion at the moment, putting him on the 614th rank in ‘The Real-Time Billionaires List’ today. The Indiana University alum founded Broadcast.com with his batchmate Todd Wagner in 1995, but ended up selling it to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999.
The reality TV star once opened up about his interest in buying Fox News. During an interview with Wired, he said that if he had the money to acquire the US network, he would ramp up his efforts to reach out to what he called “Fox News generation.”
Cuban was once the long-standing face of the NBA team Dallas Mavericks. The self-proclaimed “basketball junkie” ultimately sold his stake for $3.5 billion in late 2023, relinquishing his position at the team’s majority owner. Despite pulling back the reins on the NBA name, he once harboured the dream to run the team.
Earlier this year, he responded to a Facebook thread critical of him after the shocking Luka Doncic trade, admitting that Mavericks weren’t a profitable name during his tenure. “I made money 2 out of 23 years I was the majority owner. Lost hundreds of millions of dollars,” he wrote in the comments. Although he still remains a minority owner of the team, the position is far from what he had hoped for.
“I fully expected to run basketball. The nba wouldn’t let me put it in the contract. They took it out,” he added. “I thought [the Adelsons] would stick to their word because they didn’t know the first thing about running a team. Someone obviously changed their mind.”