As Elon Musk steps up his work on behalf of former President Donald Trump, Kamala Harris calls on her own billionaire, Mark Cuban, to reprise the role he played for Hillary Clinton in 2016 by making a series of high-profile appearances alongside the vice president. keep. president and her husband this week.
Cuban appeared with Harris in Wisconsin on Thursday and will hold a town hall in Phoenix on Saturday before heading to Michigan the next day to campaign with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.
“This election is a battle for entrepreneurs,” Cuban said Thursday in La Crosse, Wisconsin, before warning that Trump’s trade and tariff policies will drive up prices, ruin Christmas by making gifts more expensive and “shatter the dreams of entrepreneurs crush’ by making their costs unsustainable.
“Donald Trump is the Grinch who wants to steal your Christmas,” he said. “The Grinch doesn’t understand how tariffs work…The Grinch is the one who’s going to put these small businesses out of business.”
The “Shark Tank” star, who did not respond to a request for comment, brings business credibility, a tech-savvy pop culture appeal and a maverick persona seen as particularly attractive to young men, who are among the most have become popular men. contested demographic developments in elections where the gender gap has grown to historic proportions.
Harris – whose campaign tied the Cuban tour to his engagement with male voters – has recently appeared on shows like “All The Smoke,” “The Breakfast Club” with Charlamagne Tha God. The campaign also ran ads on platforms with male audiences, such as gaming site IGN, major sporting events and sports talk radio.
Although Cuban has downplayed the need for Harris to target men, he could be an integral part of these efforts and has already made Harris’ case in a semi-official capacity in podcasts and media interviews.
He has also been an emissary to the business community and helped found a group called Venture Capitalists for Kamala, which now has nearly 900 signatories, as well as Business Leaders for Harris.
Cuban’s effort comes as Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and one of the richest men in the world, has emerged alongside Trump, himself a billionaire, and is now holding a series of “conversations” with voters in Pennsylvania, separate from the campaign.
Unlike Musk, who has donated nearly $75 million to groups aligned with Trump, Cuban is not a political donor. Federal Election Commission records show a one-time donation of $1,000 was made to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., in 2002 under Cuban’s name.
But Harris allies say Cuban’s voice and personality are more valuable than his money.
For example, a new survey from Equis Research, which focuses on Latino voters, found that Cuban was the most popular figure among Hispanic men under 50, with a net favorability rating 15 percentage points higher than Musk’s.
Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler praised Cuban’s “talents” and said he has the credibility to reach voters on business and economic issues. “His many fans – including Shark Tank fans and aspiring entrepreneurs across Wisconsin – know he means what he says and says what he means,” Wikler said.
Cuban has warned Musk not to trust Trump.
“[Trump] will burn everything he touches. He doesn’t care,” Cuban told NBC News host Chuck Todd. “I told Elon, ‘There will come a time when you need something from Donald Trump and he will let you down. Guaranteed. ”
The 6-foot-2 former NBA team owner (he recently sold his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks but retains a smaller share of the team) is comfortable and confident on platforms that appeal to men but that other Democrats typically avoid , like “All-In,” the podcast popular with anti-woke Silicon Valley types.
In a recent appearance on comedian Theo Von’s wildly popular podcast, Cuban playfully dropped f-bombs, joked about disgraced hip-hop mogul Diddy, and flashed Trump with a smile on a host who is a fan of the president and had him as guest to guest. few weeks earlier.
“I like the guy, if he was here and we were just talking I would get along with him. But that’s different than wanting him to become president of the United States again,” Cuban told Von. ‘I think you need someone you can trust. Is Kamala perfect? No. Do I agree with everything she will do, say or do? No. But I trust her.’
None of this, however, is unfamiliar territory for Cuban, who played a similar role in Clinton’s ultimately failed campaign against Trump in 2016.
That year, Democrats reveled in watching Cuban taunt and insult his fellow billionaire-turned-reality-TV star in ways Clinton himself would never dream of doing publicly, leaving them to wonder if Trump was really a billionaire and they said he was unfit for office.
“I got at least twice as much money as he did,” Cuban said on Stephen Colbert’s show, before running through a series of insulting comedy jokes about the size of Trump’s hands, his multiple bankruptcies and his “shiny, orange” appearance.
“Donald, the only way you’re worth $10 billion is if I pay you $9.5 billion to wash my balls!” Cuban said as the crowd cheered like background actors in the “You Got Served” film franchise.
Democrats loved that Cuban seemed to be able to get under Trump’s skin. Clinton invited him to sit in the front row at one of her debates with Trump.
“If stupid Mark Cuban of failed Benefactor fame wants a front row seat, I might put Gennifer Flowers next to him!” Trump tweeted ahead of the debate, referring to a woman who claimed to have had an affair with Bill Clinton before his 1992 presidential election.
Before that campaign, Trump and Cuban had a hot-and-cold relationship. In 2014, Trump tweeted that he had “much greater wealth and athletic ability” than Cuban. In another tweet that year, he called Cuban “an asshole” and said, “Major League Baseball was very smart when they didn’t let Mark Cuban buy a team.”
Cuban has toyed with the idea of running for president himself — Trump tweeted in 2017 that Cuban “isn’t smart enough to run for president!” – although Cuban last year ditched the idea of running in 2024.
Still, not all Democrats are happy to see party leaders bring a billionaire onto the campaign trail.
After all, Cuban has his own agenda, and some on the left wonder what he would want from a potential Harris White House
“Mark Cuban is a talented communicator, and I understand why the personality struggles of billionaire reality TV show Donald Trump are attractive to the campaign. But billionaire tech brothers often have a lot in common,” said Jeff Hauser, founder of the Revolving Door Project, a progressive group that focuses on staff appointments to key economic policy positions.
Cuban has called for the removal of the head of the Security and Exchange Commission over his approach to cryptocurrency regulation and has said he would be interested in the job for himself.
“Head of the SEC, head of the SEC, that’s the job I would take,” he said last month when asked by a Fox News host if he would like to take a job in a government Harris to hire. He added that he “might” consider taking charge of the Department of Health and Human Services as well.
He is also facing calls to oust Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, a hard-working progressive darling, prompting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to declare that there would be “a full-blown brawl” if “billionaires [who] I tried to play footsie while Harris pushed for her removal.
“Harris’s paid ads reflect a populist bent toward economics, but it is troubling that Cuban could instead elevate plutocratic goals within a Harris administration, contrary to her ads, through personal charisma.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
