Former Shark Tank star Mark Cuban claimed that he was courted as a possible working mate for presidential candidate Kamala Harris through the 2024 election.
The Dallas Mavericks minority proprietor, 66, advised the “Bulwark” podcast on Friday, June 20, that he was in contact with the Harris marketing campaign earlier than Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz was picked as her working mate in August 2024.
Host Tim Miller stated he’d heard “inexperienced room gossip at MSNBC” about Cuban’s negotiations with Harris and requested if Cuban declined to ship in “VP vetting papers” as a result of “the listing could be too lengthy.”
“Yeah,” Cuban replied. “The second a part of that, my response, was I’m not excellent because the Quantity Two particular person.”
Cuban continued, “The very last thing we’d like is me telling Kamala, you understand, the president, that, ‘No, that’s a dumb thought.’ Proper? And I’m not actual good at shaking palms and kissing infants.”
The mogul agreed with Miller’s evaluation that the 2024 presidential marketing campaign would have been fully “completely different” if he’d ended up because the V.P. candidate.
“Clearly, it could have been completely different,” he stated. “My character is totally completely different than Tim’s. My experiences, my background is completely different. I feel, I minimize via the s*** extra immediately. I’m not a politician.”
He then joked, “It might have been completely different however it could have been terrible! She would have fired me inside six days.”
Mark Cuban in March 2025. Julia Beverly/WireImage
Us Weekly reached out to Cuban and Harris’ representatives for remark.
Whereas Cuban is a registered Impartial, he has lengthy been a political and enterprise foe of President Donald Trump. Cuban endorsed Harris and campaigned together with her, previous to her loss to Trump within the November 2024 normal election.
“You desire a president that’s constructive, who’s going to encourage you to do nice issues.” Cuban stated on the marketing campaign path final 12 months. “You don’t desire a president who’s calling America a trash can.”
The billionaire investor has flirted with presidential politics prior to now. He advised the New York Each day Information in 2019 that he was “strongly contemplating working” as an impartial presidential candidate within the 2020 election.
He later confirmed on the “Ax Information” podcast in June 2020 that he went as far as to fee a pattern ballot pitting him in opposition to Trump and Joe Biden, however outcomes confirmed he was “solely in a position to rise up to 25%” in a hypothetical three-way matchup. On account of this polling, Cuban stopped exploring an impartial bid for the White Home.
Cuban is contemporary off his exit as a Shark Tank investor. He introduced in March that he was leaving the ABC actuality competitors after 15 seasons.
“I keep in mind pondering this present just isn’t going to final,” Cuban stated in Could’s season finale “Simply go on there, tear it up, elevate hell, trigger hassle. I actually didn’t anticipate there to be a 3rd season after which growth. It simply blew up.”
He added, “What I’d prefer to say is because of all people who took an opportunity on me, all of the entrepreneurs that stated sure to me. Who is aware of what number of millionaires we’ve created, how many individuals we’ve impressed? I’m happy with what we’ve performed.”