Mark Cuban Pulls NO Punches | The Bulwark Podcast

Somebody I kind of trust said that they asked you to send in VP vetting papers and you said no, the list would be too long. Is that true?

It is true. Yeah.

Why didn't you consider—I mean, you ended up out there campaigning with her, advising?

Well, the second part of that, my response was, I'm not very good as the number two person, and so the last thing we need is me telling Kamala, you know, the president, that no, that's a dumb idea, right?

[Music]

Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to finally welcome an entrepreneur and investor, film producer, former owner of the Dallas Mavericks—boo!—He just wrapped the final season of Shark Tank. It's Mark Cuban. How you doing, man?

Good, Tim. How are you doing?

I'm doing pretty well. You know, with the obvious caveats applying, the Nuggets aren't in the finals tonight.

Well, I guess we're taping this on Thursday, so the finals might be over by the time people hear this tomorrow afternoon. And, uh, you know, the world has gone mad, but my life's good. How about you?

You know, same, right? I mean, the Mavs aren't in the finals. Nothing else would matter, right? What—what else matters? I've got so much I want to pick your brain on in limited time. So, we'll just try to move through it all. I—I guess since we're doing the Never Trumper podcast, I just—I kind of want to start with the Trump report card from you because you try to be—I mean, you—you're for Kamala and for Hillary, but you try to be a straight shooter, which I appreciate. You know, you—you'll give him a—you'll give him something. I don't like to hand it to him even, you know what I mean? Like I'm reluctant. I'm reluctant to be. It's like that old drill meme. Uh, I'm issuing a correction. You don't got to hand it to the terror group ISIS. I feel that way about Trump. But—but how about—how about you? How—what kind of report card would you give him right now? Um, just, you know, across economy, foreign, etc.

Well, so, but when I was campaigning for Kamala, we said we were going to do—um, we were going to shut down the border effectively, right? And we talked about how the new plans from Biden had reduced the numbers so that they were lower than Trump in his final month, etc. He's done it. He shut down the border, you know, and so he—he deserves credit for that. He said he was going to change the conversation on DEI. I don't think he understands what DEI is. Um, and so I don't know how much he's actually changed other than a lot of copy pasta and search and replace. Um, and obviously there's been times when, you know, there's—there's been economic impact where programs have had to be shut down, but I think generally across the country, I don't think he's had dramatic changes on corporations, but he's done what he said he's going to do, right?

Yeah.

No Harvey Milk on the boat anymore. Sorry, Harvey. RIP.

No. Yeah. Um, and so third, um, I say deportations. He's done it wrong, but he's done it. I think we get confused a little bit on deportations because he—he puts everything on tape and he makes everything an event which amplifies it. But at least the last numbers I saw, he wasn't deporting as many people as Joe Biden. I think that's changing a little bit the last couple weeks.

Yeah. Well, I think he's tried to make it seem like it's changed, right? And he's certainly done a lot of po—high-profile—high-profile um, attempts at deportations for sure, but then he walked it back. I mean, where the greatest numbers were, you know, farm hands, you know, working in services. Part of the reason that is though, just like—just to be tech—because part of the reason—because this is important, the deportation thing is very important to me. So I just like—part of that is because Joe Biden gets credit for like—he didn't shut down the border the first three years, right? So the people—some people are coming across the border and then they're getting turned right back around. So that's a one, you know, that's—that counts as a one. And—but so that number, right? So now Trump has fewer, but they're—he's doing more of like the raids of like random businesses and people that have worked here a long time. So no—look, when I—when I—when I was out there for Kamala and I talked to businesses and I would say, do you want somebody walking in the door asking you for all your I-9s and then going in and then taking those phone numbers and showing up at people's homes and we're going to have Elian Gonzalez day in and day out. So he said he was going to do that and he's done it. I don't say that I'm agreeing with it, but he's doing it, right? And I—I think he's made a lot of mistakes in his approach, etc. But then again, he walked it back and the numbers show, at least prior to that, that he wasn't even hitting—um—Biden numbers, which obviously freaks Stephen Miller out a lot. So, that's three. Number four is what he's done on crypto with the SEC. And I'll separate those two, right? Crypto, put aside his grift, right? That's ridiculous. The Trump memecoin. Like literally when that Trump memecoin came out, I emailed the CEO and the people I knew at Coinbase and said I was embarrassed to be a customer of Coinbase because they were trading it. He's allowed to do a memecoin—more sponsor of the military parade. You mean Coinbase?

Coinbase. Yeah, those guys. Military parade. Those guys, right? You know, you—you got to kiss up to the audience of one. So, but that said, I am a fan of crypto and I think that there is utility for it. But how—how Trump has done it with the memecoin is ridiculous. But that's only one—that's a 4A. I guess 4B is the SEC. The SEC was a mess and the—you know, I truly believe Gary Gensler cost, comma, the election, but that's a different conversation. But just—sure—but just generally the way the SEC has historically done business and look, they came after me for insider trading. And I beat them in about 3 hours in a trial. Literally in the time it took for lunch, that was it. Um, but their whole spiel has been you litigate to regulate, meaning you don't tell anybody what the rules are, but if they believe you broke the rules, then they're going to sue you anyways, which is wrong. And this guy who's—and Kamala, when I was—when I was out campaigning with her and with talking to Doug about it, too, Kamala's a smart lawyer and we had this conversation. You need bright line rules in the SEC so people know what they can and can't do when it comes to starting or running any business. Bright line rules I think will reduce—um—the number of infractions and lawsuits because people know what they can't do. This—the new approach—that's what they're doing. Yeah. So those are his wins. Let's hear about the negatives. Where do you give him some L's?

Oh my god. Just no leadership, you know, no ability to make a decision. Still listens to the last person he talked to, is excluded from the big boy conversations. Um, I mean, the—the list is long.

How about your wheelhouse? I mean, I—because to me it's like—I—you know, look—I mean, he doesn't understand tariffs, but you know, I just look at a whole picture. I—what you're doing is he's putting together this—this bill on the Hill that's going to raise interest. I—I think this is—I could appreciate and I want—I wonder your take on this because the first term he did some pretty traditional Republican economics and took a lot of credit for it and pretended like it was his magic business apprentice skills, but it was like kind of the same policies that Mark—what Jeb would have—this time it's been—it's different and—and the—the environment's different because of interest rates and a bunch of other stuff globally. So, we've got a debt-busting bill that's going to increase everybody's interest rates, combined with tariffs that is going to increase everybody's costs, combined with deportations and a culture of fear that is—that is going to affect the workforce. Like, you combine all that [expletive] together and I mean, people aren't—like it feels kind of status quo to Biden except for in certain industries like right now in people's lives every day. But I don't—I—I think it's going to start feeling worse for people not too long from now. But already is starting to feel worse, right?

I think you're going to have—there's two economies in the United States right now. Um, there's all the small towns and cities and states. They're getting torched. Everything that they—man—his people—the forgotten man.

Exactly. Yeah. The real people that you know—working on farms, the—the, you know, the people who do—are do beef, you know, that do cattle in Nebraska. All the states that have to balance their budget now find themselves short because of all the Doge cuts or all the office closings or the people that are laid off, they're all in deep [expletive]. Like one of my fun pastimes is to look at small-town newspapers. So like I'll get the—the Parkersburg Sentinel, I forget what it's called. Um, and I'll just go reading through it because they'll write about the things that are impacting their local community and I want to understand where the impact that Doge is having or is not having just to check my whole card and literally, you know, the Daughters of American Revolution museum type thing—that money that they got from the states—gone, right? The—the buildings that house, you know, Social Security or, you know, in Parkersburg, West Virginia, it's a town of 29,000 and, you know, there's the Treasury—um—group there that has 2,000 employees and I don't—you know, at least 125 have been fired, but all the—the whole—all these small towns, particularly red towns, are decimated and it's only going to get worse. And I think though they're going to have the hardest time with all the economics and even from a tourist perspective, you know, when something goes up in cost and you have to ship it to a small town, it's a lot more expensive to ship it to a small town. So they get double whammy. Whereas the blue towns that are the bigger, more urban—um—and consolidated cities, they're going to get hit less. New York, LA, right? They'll have an impact there, but it's not going to be nearly as bad as the small towns.

I want to—um—do a little bit of going back unfortunately. Uh, you mentioned Kamala a couple times as if you were—like you were in the room, and so I'm gonna start here. We're gonna do a little gossip at first. There was some green room gossip at MSNBC. You ready for this?

You ready?

I—I—I wouldn't tell you this—it wasn't like pretty good. Like somebody I kind of trust said that they asked you to send in VP vetting papers and you said no, the list would be too long. Is that true?

It is true. Um, why didn't you—why didn't you consider—I mean, you are out there campaigning with her, advising.

Well, the second part of that is—yeah, the second part of that, my response was, I'm not very good as the number two person, and so the last thing we need is me telling Kamala, you know, the president, that no, that's a dumb idea, right? And I'm not real good at the shaking hands.

I don't know about that, man. I—I was talking to Pete Buttigieg a couple weeks ago and I was like—I was like, give me—I want to—you know—give you a time machine. We're going to go back in a DeLorean—like what could we do different? So I want to ask you that same question but also in the context like if it was you instead of Tim Walz—who the hell knows—I don't know. It feels maybe different.

It feels maybe different. I mean, obviously would have been different. Um, my personality is completely different than Tim's. My experiences, my backgrounds are completely different. Um, I think I cut through the [expletive] more directly. I—I'm not a politician and—and so it would have been different, but it would have been awful. She would have fired me.

It would have been better than the present situation, you know.

Well, yes, that's true. But, you know, I—I—I really thought she was going to win. Here's why I—here's why I want to pick on that. And I know you don't want the clip here. You're like, we would have won if Mark Cuban was VP. And I—I get that though. And I don't even know if I believe that, but maybe.

I think it would have been meaningfully different in a way that like picking Josh Shapiro, whatever, wouldn't have been meaningfully different in a way that's kind of hard to predict. But I was listening to you today with my man Theo Von, my fellow Louisiana podcaster, and you did two hours with this dude and I listened to all of it on 2x speed and I'm like—it's hard for me to find it—the most crazy experience ever—'cause Theo 1x speed is crazy. It's wild. He's like asking about porn and gay stuff and like then you get into politics and like he's all over the map. But like at the end of the two hours I'm—it's still hard for me to understand why he's for Trump. Like there's no real substantive thing.

He's gangster. He's gangster, baby. That's what he said, right?

Yeah. His vibes. He's gangster. But that's most—look, most people just want to live their life. They want to get up in the morning with a smile and not be stressed. In my mind, the number one job of any candidate, and this is where Trump has spectacularly failed, the number one job of any president should be to reduce the stress of the people of the country. That's not working so well. There's only one, at least for me.

No, look, there's only one thing we all share, and that's our president. Everything else is unique to us, you know, or unique in a thousand different ways, but the president is the one thing we all—all share. And having somebody who communicates trust and hope and reduces people's stress is critical. But the point being is relating it back to Theo and it's not his job to think about all that [expletive]. They're not going to think, you know, about—they're not going to think pragmatically about what's best for me and what's best for the country. And that's what the Democrats have to learn. People just want to get through [expletive] and get to the game. Like, who's going to win tonight? Like, am I going out to get drunk? Where are my boys at tonight? You know, who's playing who and what's—we're gonna talk about how gay the Roman Empire was, you know, and like whether if you get rich enough, you get bored of straight sex, whatever other random [expletive] he wants to talk to you about.

Here's the thing, though. I—and I am actually—I'm not critical of Theo. I don't—and I—I wish we lived in a world where every single person with a platform like thought a little bit more deeply about policy. I—and you know, I've had a chance to meet him and I—they're not. I wish that, but we don't. We live in the world we live in. And like the thing that's actually important about that observation you just made is that like I came away from that thinking like basically he just wanted a guy that wasn't a—like he's not ideological. A lot of the Democrats look at all that and they're like—they're racist, they're conservative, we're not getable. And like this dude—like he just—it pretty much came down to he didn't want somebody that was a politician. The Trump's vibes are a little more gangster. He doesn't like getting his finger wagged at. And like that might be shallow, but like that's also getable. That makes them get. And so that's why I'm like—if Cuban was on that ticket, they're getable, right? They're all getable, right? Look, Rogan, Theo, the Pauls, you know, the Nelk Boys. I've been on all but Rogan. I've been on. They want to talk about sports. They want to talk about girls. They want to talk about getting [expletive] up. They want to talk about gambling, right? They don't want to talk about politics. 99% of people in this country do not want to talk about politics on a day-to-day basis. And in fact, they're trying to get away from it. So, if you're going to try to connect to them, you've got to connect to them on a human level. You can't talk ideologies. You can't ask for ideological purity. You know, you can't extrapolate every single piece of [expletive] that happens and say, "Now this is going to happen all the time everywhere." That's not how most people think. So now this is the part that makes me want to pull my hair out about them though because then—because when you get to the policy it's like most of them are for like Bernie healthcare stuff—totally vibing with your cost-plus drugs reform stuff which we'll talk about—like against the Iran war that Trump might be getting us into right now—against—right?—and so like on policy stuff like—you know—on immigration reason—so what does that mean—what does that mean—it means we don't know how to sell—well, I told this to Kamala—I told it to Tim—I told it to the people around. Our problem isn't our policies. Our problem is how do we sell them, right? How do we make people feel comfortable with what we believe so that they will at least absorb it and understand that there's, you know, that there's something in it for them. It's just like our lives that we live on a day-to-day basis. The things that we eat, the things that we, you know, how we look at our health have all changed. They've changed. And over time, these things have been, you know, communicated and sold to us in different ways. And we've evolved. The Democrats have not evolved. Not the—the Republicans have evolved. It—the—there is no more Republican party. You know, it's the Trump family business. And Trump has always been a salesperson. And Trump understands that if you make people feel envious of some other group and then in turn you [expletive] on that other group that they're envious of, you can sell them pretty much anything.

Okay. So, there's another group of people you hang with that I do have a little more contempt for than the Theos of the world, and that's the rich guys.

I don't hang with [expletive] guys.

You don't? Okay. Well, whatever. You know, richer guys than me then. I don't get to talk to rich guys. You talk to rich guys sometimes. At least maybe you don't hang with them. You at least, you know, you at least hear from them. Like, I just feel like a lot of what you guys do, you know, in investing class and all that is—it's risk assessment, right? There's risk assessment as is a central part of all this. And I just for the life of me can still not wrap my head around the failed risk assessment from—from these guys on Trump versus—Trump versus Biden/Kamala.

Okay, I'll explain it to you exactly. So even when I was out there trying to talk about cost-plus drugs—um—and I went to the White House and Ron—I met with Ron Klain a little bit—um—for a few minutes and then—um—I wanted to meet with Biden. He wouldn't meet with me. Every single per—I wouldn't say he wouldn't—he couldn't. Maybe it was just couldn't, but put me aside. Maybe I don't rank, right? But every single business person that I've spoken to said the same thing—that they wanted to get time with Biden and couldn't do it. And whether it was about AI, whether it was about crypto, whether it was about other businesses, you know, even Elon when they were talking about EVs, he couldn't get in the room. So their first initial response is this guy doesn't like us. So then the question comes Biden or Kamala versus Trump, right? The response as it rem—as it applies to Trump because I was like—I know this guy, right? I did a podcast with a VC where I said—VC—this guy underpaid invoices. Would you ever underpay invoices? No. This might—Okay, that's neither here nor there.

No, no. VC would—like I may not agree with him policy-wise, but he's not like that. But in—in any event, like I—I use the example 'cause that's when—um—not long after the trials in New York were happening and Michael Cohen was talking about how Trump underpaid invoices and he was proud of Michael when he did the same thing. I'm like—I thought when Michael said that [expletive] maybe, you know,

When he'd have this, you know, little standup press conference after each day's hearing, that he would say, "Of course I paid everybody." No. Right. And I would say to all these guys, all these business guys, "Character is destiny. Character is destiny. This is what you're going to get." And they're like, they would always go back to his first term. But he didn't do any of these things in the first term. He didn't do this, this, this, this, and this. And we have no reason to expect that he would change dramatically and do anything differently than the first term. Obviously, that was wrong, but that was their logic. I, I, I, that was not satisfying to me. It might be true, but it wasn't satisfying. It's like, "Oh, oh, Biden won't meet with me. Oh, I'm a master of the dumb." Trump's a [ __ ] Trump walked into any of those guys' boardrooms 10 years ago and was like, "Will you give me $50 million?" He would have been laughed out of Mark Andre would have laughed him out of office. Okay, so let's, but let's take it one step further, right?

So, let's talk about them showing up at the inauguration and giving all that money. Why? Right? And I'm going to tell you exactly why we are in a zero-sum game with artificial intelligence. These companies, these five, six, seven companies are spending 60 to 100 billion dollars a year so that they can potentially win AI. You know who had no interest in talking about that or dealing with that? Joe Biden. I tried to get Kamala more pushing it, and she did, but by that time it was already too late. They were already all in. And so if you're in a position, Tim, where you just spent 60 to 100 billion dollars and the requirement so that one guy with one pen can't [ __ ] you over and end that 60 to 100 billion dollars is you have to kiss the ring. If the Democratic party said, you know what, we've got this [ __ ] Republican who'll switch if Tim Miller goes and kisses the ring and shows up at, you know, you're doing it. That Well, I'm not doing it. I've got a great life in my home in New Orleans, but I hear you. Most people are doing it. I'm happy in my little studio. Most people are doing it. No, but you know what I'm saying though, right? Because it is a zero. I want to get to I think next is literally the next thing on my list, but just I just want to push back on one more element of it. Okay. I, I don't agree with it or endorse it, but I get it in the period between him winning and inauguration day. That again, that last two months though, it's just like you look at this guy. I mean, forget going into Andreessen Horowitz; if he showed up on Shark Tank for a crossover episode, you know, it's just like this is ridiculous. Like the downside risk, the tail risk of giving, of giving him and imagine when he's 80. What are you going to do? How do you change it? Okay, they could you did I guess I guess this is my question. Why is it just I literally would say this to Nicole Wallace who'd be off air and I'd be like, why is it Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban and you and me, like where is everybody else? Why didn't they do anything? I don't need anything from them, you know? I mean, they, they literally have hundreds of billions of dollars at risk. The future of their companies that they've spent their entire lives building is at risk. That's why.

All right. You're kinder to them than I am, which is nice. That's a good instinct. Um, I want to ask you about AI stuff. Um, you're This is another thing you're more optimistic about than me. And, um, there's a there's an alarming AI story I want to get to, but I just I want you to do a bull pitch for me on AI first before I get to the alarming. I'll tell you what I tell every, every kid. I wish I was 16 because the tools that AI provide any 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 25, 30-year-old kid to go out and start a business are amazing. That it's like having every professor, every library, every mentor, every consultant available at your fingertips to go out and do whatever it is you want. If you never, if you didn't graduate from high school, if you never even sniffed a community college, if you're willing to spend time with all these new AI tools that are changing by the minute because you have the time to and the interest to do it, you are going to have the most significant job advantage, competitive advantage, entrepreneurial advantage. This is such a unique time in history when it comes to enabling young kids to do unique things. We've never seen anything like it. And if you believe in Gen A and Gen Z and what they're able to do for the future, put aside, you know, our age, my age, right? If you believe in them and what they're able to do, I, I think it's just going to be I do believe in them. I worry though about just even the widening gap that we have now. Like look, I got a seven-year-old. I hear you, man, like a a 16-year-old who's a who's a um somebody that's a self-starter, who's curious, who's interesting and unbest time in the world, right? A 16-year-old who's lonely, who is doesn't know what to do with themselves. Now you got someone to talk to. Now you got something. Okay, Mark, that's very concerning. That's not a real conversation. That's not a real Okay, but, but, but Right. So the having access to a therapist, not a realist, a marginal smartphone, it's a read some of the research now in terms of how kids are look, there are risks, right? There's been a kid who killed themselves, right? There's been kids who get too in, in and connected to it. So it's it's pick your poison. Do you want a kid who's isolated with nobody to talk to at all with no access to therapy? Now, that's a different problem and a different issue we might be able to solve in another way by getting them at the pool or I want them at the local pool. I want them at the community pool instead. Can I pick option three? Well, that's a whole different thing. Well, no. Option three is going to chat GPT or Perplexity and says I need a workout program and I need a social program. So the point being that we have a lot of problem social problems, a lot of social problems across the entire spectrum of people, every city, every demographic, right, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Now we can talk about what are the paths we can take to try to fill th to solve those problems, and all the ones that don't involve AI are incredibly expensive, incredibly people-intensive, and really difficult to implement in any political ical environment. But on the other hand, what we're talking about are the frailties of AI that's relatively new. And so, can we get accomplished therapist, accomplished psychologists, accomplished sociologists to produce models that are trusted because they define the models? I think the mis the misperception that we have is that there's going to be this one big AI model. That's not going to be the case. There. Those people who are spending the $60 to 100 billion dollars a year, they all have to compete, and each of those is not going away. But more importantly, there are going to be millions of models. There are going to be millions of things and apps where you can say the therapist you wish you could have gone to, like this was the perfect therapist for for you or your child. That therapist will have a model, and that model will have the guard rails that you'd want that they would use in a face-to-face conversation. And if hopefully there's a reasonable price, then you can use a te have a telehealth moment where they talk to them. AI will make that better, not worse.

Let's um there's a key word that you had in there, guard rails, because I do want to talk about this because I would have had you if had we done this I this would have been a dream for me in 2007. So I would have been a pean [ __ ] and not had the balls to push back on you. But in 2007 I would agreed with you. I'd have been like because I was like South by Southwest kid very excited about all these new social social apps and you know I've got 18 years of experience now and um and all the cool stuff about the social web that I was promised um we got we got some of them we got some of them totally different though okay but part of that was because you know there wasn't a lot of smart regulation these these boomers on the hill did not do you know did let these guys kind of do do whatever they wanted. And now you're telling me, well, what the AI gazillionaires who want to be trillionaires that are that are doing this AI, what they want right now is a president who won't who won't [ __ ] who won't do anything, who won't put any limits on them, any regulation. That concerns me a lot given our experience in the last little round, right? And that's fair, but the question becomes, who are we competing with? What are the options available to us? Right? And so unlike most technologies historically, the US has just dominated. But now countries are starting to realize France, the UK, China in particular are realizing that look, this is a a race that might end up, you know, creating some level of economic and military dominance and we have to win the AI race and they're not going to have any guardrails. And so there will there be some level of collateral damage? Yes. What it is, I don't know. Will that could it be worse than we ever expected? Yes. Um Okay. Yeah. I'm not gonna lie. Right. But but what's even worse is where we know there are no guardrails and nobody will attempt to create guardrails in other countries. And I'd rather have somebody who's, you know, living doiciled here, pays taxes here, whatever, has a business based here where, you know, you always, you can go after somebody when they've done some AI that, you know, we don't think is acceptable at any level. If you just stop it before anybody gets to innovate, we're not good at determining where innovation will lead to. And that's the catch-22. Now going to social media where the algorithms have gone and the dominance by all these people who are rich. The good news is from AI is it's so much easier to create competitive applications and have different levels of communications. I think people are going to use social media less and you're going to see and I think a lot of we should have regulated the algorithms like we should have like you should have had a system where like you had to opt in to getting information instead of Yeah. So I'll tell you an argument I got on Twitter, right? This was years ago and I said we needed to use real names. I've always been for that and I but here was the argument against it and it made me really think, right yeah all that stuff. Yeah. And so you pick your poison and so but now when you you know with Elon owning Twitter and you know Meta with Zuckerberg and it's all self-enrichment and all that you know the question becomes what alternatives can you create? The good news is we may not have to create alternatives because AI, if you've seen all the the AI-generated videos that are popping up, they will dominate, dominate social media because everybody's trying to arbitrage the economics and make money from it. And so it's going to be really tough to know what's real and what's not real. And you may not need real people to create entertainment, which means that no don't don't do that because that in my mind I think it's going to force pe more face-to-face communications. I, I did this thing I just love that in your pro like it's going to be hard to tell what's real and what's not real and that's in the positive pitch. Well, yeah, but but that is positive in in some respects, right? Because it ends up being not a silver bullet. It's not the right term, but you it's some becomes so easy to overwhelm, to flood the zone, if you will, with stuff that isn't real. People are going to want stuff that is real, and we'll want more face-to-face communications. In business as well, when you get all these fake voices calling you as a sales [ __ ], it's like if you're the company that has a salesperson at least knocks on your door or shows up face to face, you're going to appreciate that. If you don't know what's real or not, you're going to want somebody telling it to your face so you know it's real and that you can trust it. I, I just had the same conversation with a bunch of doctors an hour ago. The number one business attribute is trust. For any app, for any business, you have to be able to engender trust. In an AI world, yeah, for sure. Right. In an AI world, it's easier to do a lot of processes, but it's going to get harder and harder to get people to trust what you're presenting because the the pedigree is uncertain, the background is uncertain. So when you try to game all these things out and look at second, third, fourth order, right? It's I don't think it's as bad as you think because there's so much competition and I think there's a positive to it. But I understand the risk. One more on the risk.

No, cuz here we go. I haven't even got I haven't even got you to the thing that that I was that I want that prompted this topic. OpenAI, uh, in a press comment yesterday, uh, they cautioned that upcoming models will carry a higher level of risk when it comes to the creation of biological weapons, especially by those who don't really understand what they're doing. It's not a great that's not that's not a great you know warning sign like on the cigarette pack it's like might get lung cancer on open air it's like you know maybe a random teenager will create a biological weapon that's a little concerning. Yeah, it's like a cigarette pack saying when you light this it might have a blast radius of two miles, right? No, there's there's look, like I said, there's going to be unintended circumstances. There's going to be collateral damage just like there are on the internet. Remember when the internet first started hitting, it was like, let's see if we can look up how to make an atom bomb, right? And you know, and so yes, all those things. And I would be shocked that um OpenAI didn't put guardrails cuz it's easy to say bomb and da da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d but it makes for a great way to to sell yourself and get everybody talking about you because look at what Gemini is the difference between Gemini and Chat GPT is Gemini the guardrails are too too extensive, right? It's like Gemini is boring whereas chat GPT kisses your ass too much, right? and it you know and so they've all made choices but they're in a death war death not being literally to see who's going to win market share right now it's chat GPT but there's it they might be the IBM of AI models right now we just I want to go back to crypto really quick because I do think I I'm so torn on this one because I agree with your kind of passing comment earlier that it really hurt the Democrats how hostile they were to crypto and Gensler and and and I see it yeah I see it in my life just anecdotally with random non-political friends. So, I agree with that. And yet, like crypto needs to be regulated like much and this bill that they put through Congress is not it. And I get I have friends that are in the crypto industry. That's only really for stable. I know. Yeah. That that was only so they get mad at me. I got friends that are at at Coinbase at these other at these other platforms. They get mad at me for my comments on this and I'm like and they're like, "Well, you know, there's some really legit Bitcoin is legit. the X is legit, Y is legit. And I'm like, okay, but if you walked into Walmart and it was like three aisles were legit products and then like 27 aisles were total scams. Well, no. Okay, but let's take what you're saying. Go to Amazon, right? So, one of my big things that I pushed and I tried to get Kamala, but it was too esoteric is all the knockoffs on Amazon. Like all a bunch of my Shark Tank companies, a bunch of Shark Tank companies, period. The shows on Shark Tank, they're already on Amazon. Boom. income the Chinese knockoffs. And you probably don't know this, but if you're a Chinese company and you want to sell on Amazon, you don't have to have any nexus in the United States. Meaning, there's no paperwork you have to fill out. You don't have to have a domestic location. You don't have there's no proof that you filed taxes on anything you make. You can just come in and [ __ ] over as many American companies as you want. So to your point that there, you know, even in real-life products, they're scams left and right, and that's a whole lot more expensive than even the crypto. Now I get people just really quick though, like I hear you and that's bad and we should have rules against the Chinese knockoff guys, but like it's the business person that's getting screwed over in that case. Like in the in the cryptocoin case, it's the people. No, no, no, no, no. It's him walking in. No, it's Tim walking in and thinking he's buying Dude Wipes, one of my Shark Tank companies, and it says Dude. Oh, yeah. With a three or whatever. Yeah. Gotcha. All right. All right. Yeah. So, you don't know the difference. So, cuz if they weren't selling anything or I thought you were saying they're just making a cheaper brand version of it, but no, they're literally copy No, they are. They are. Yeah. They're literally copying it and making a knockoff and they're getting they're outselling the Shark Tank companies and those some of the Shark Tank big companies have gone out of business. Right. at least get my Chinese wipes, though. Whereas the people invested in Melaniacoin just lost their [ __ ] ass, but but it's their it's their lottery ticket, right? I hate memecoins. I hate them. I hate them, right? I think they're they're the scum of the crypto earth, right? It's a problem. I don't think they should exist, but the people who love them look at it as a a musical chairs lottery ticket that if you know how to play the game, we've got rules, man. Steve Wynn and those guys, you you want to get in the casino business. Just like have a lottery where you everybody loses. No, I agree with you. I I hate meme coins. That's rules. We got rules. No problem. I agree. Right. I'd have no problem outlining meme points. Now, the crypto people would hate me, right? And they do hate me because I'm not purely libertarian on it. But I think to evolve from the pure libertarian history of crypto to get it to where it's ma more mainstream and easy for grandma, which we we've failed at miserably so far. Look, let me say it differently. There's been things that have worked really well with crypto and things that have failed miserably. And things that should have worked well have failed miserably. Things like smart contracts on Ethereum to create, you know, applications that truly have utility. That should have been way further ahead than it is. And the reason it's not is because Gary Gensler made it impossible to follow the rules. Now, that's not the same case in other countries. So, a lot of companies left. But when you look at the grifts like the memecoins, like the Melania and Trump coins, that's just a grift. And there's just no other way to put it. And either you pay a whole lot of tax to griff people that there's rules, there's regulations. I agree with you 100%. Do you worry about paranoid Tims coming in now? Do you worry about the teal like the idea that they're trying to move us off of fiat currency altogether and the risk associated with that? Does that worry you at all? Yeah, there certainly is risk, right? because I forget the name of it, but I I lost money um 15 years ago with this not a bond, but it was it was RI something um that said it

Was it? Was it backed by the dollar? And it would never break a dollar until it did, right in like 2008? And this was a regulated thing. So there is that risk for stable coins, and I think you've got, you know, you've got to really—the Genius Act was a first step, but it's not the last step. I don't think people are going to take it. I think I thought it was a good first step, just so we can start making the the point that crypto can be regulated, and so because it won't be the last regulation. But to your point, is Teal trying to undermine the US dollar? I don't think so. Right. I% too much to lose. No, I'm not. Obviously, nothing about Peter Teal I'm 100% sure about, right? You know, I've only met the guy once. But at the same time, Ben undermines the entire economy, and that does no good for anybody. That circles me back to the Trump point. I guess this was my whole thing with the Trump point the whole time. It's like he obviously was going to be bad for the economy to me. Like it was ob—like his stated plans were all very risky.

I agree with you. I agree with you. Right. I mean, all the things I said when I was out for Kabla turned out to be 100% true, right? I I was up—I bet a hundred, and I would tell people this, and they were like, "But he didn't do it before," he did this way. It's my people—it's Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan's fault—it's my people for jamming through the traditional Chamber of Commerce Republican agenda and letting him brand it, you know, honestly, yeah. I mean, and and you know, I kept—again, I'll say it again—character's destiny. Donald Trump is a great marketer, great salesperson, and like a lot of salespeople that I've dealt with, he cares more about closing the sale and saying he closed the deal than following through to make sure the services cost plus drugs.

How would you fix the health care system? Easy question. You have two minutes. I only got two minutes, right? Well, first, what is cost plus drugs? You go to costplusdrugs.com, and you put in the name of your medication. Let's just say you have cancer and you need a matnip, right? If this was four years ago, and you'd walk into a big pharmacy, and that matnip would cost $2,000 plus. Now, you go to costplusdrugs.com, you put it in, we show you our actual cost. What we pay for it shows up. We show you our markup. It's only 15%. If you want it via mail order, we have a pharmacist review it for $5 and $5 for shipping and handling. And that's it. And so, you know exactly what it's going to cost you for any of your medications. And we've helped millions of people and save—I don't even know how many lives—and helps however many families. So, that's part one. Part two, how do you fix health care? Right. First is transparency. That's a big part of it. But part two is you look for the leverage points in health care because that's what [ __ ] it all up.

When you think about healthcare, it's really simple, right? You go to the doctor; the doctor either says you need something or you don't. If you need something, then there's only two questions: What's it cost and how do you pay for it? That's it. The problem with health care isn't the doctors or even the hospitals. It's what we charge and how we ask people to pay for it. And a big part of that problem is because of how the whole system is set up. If you think about healthcare plans, whether it's ACA, whether it's Medicare Advantage, whether it's Medicare Part D, you've got some—or for your company, right?—you've got some insurance company that's saying, "Look, here's the plan. We're going to change it every year. Here, we're going to have one one plan that has a low premium, high deductible, and another plan that has a low um high premium and low deductible." And young people, the people with less money, always choose the high deductible and hope they don't get sick, right? But what they don't tell you is one, they set the deductible so high, given that, you know, most of America can't afford $400. There ain't no [ __ ] way they can afford to pay their deductible. Now, you know who loses that money when they can't afford to pay their deductible? It's not the insurance company. It's not the company that you're getting your insurance from. It's not the ACA plan. It's the [ __ ] hospitals and doctors that they turned into uh prime lenders, you know, the the guys will have to take on any risk. And so, because of the plans that the insurance companies have designed where they don't pay any attention or give a [ __ ] if the people can afford the deductibles that they sign up for, and the government hasn't figured out yet that we've got to guarantee it like we can't do um single-payer right now.

What? What are your feelings on single-payer? Insane—like to the idea that we could afford that. I liked the old—there was a Ry—I think it was Ryan Widen. It was an old Paul Ryan thing, which will trigger some of the progressive listeners, but it was basically just like a a public option for like low income. It's like a Medicaid thing, and it was scaled up and like the higher you got that right. We kind of got that with Medicaid right on Medicare for all. Yeah. First thing—Medicare for all—if you read like Jipel's—Congressman Jipel's—um Medicare for all proposal, the first thing it says is this this shall be run and organized by the the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Insane. So RFK Junior needs to know. Yeah. Like the whole thing. That's all you need to know, right? But here's the thing, right? If we introduce transparent—just say like cost plus—everything was transparent, right? Then you could have cities, states, counties, um, and say, "Look, here's our budget." And if we know exactly what it's going to cost and we can use, you know, we can use scientists that extrapolate the data to figure out what our annual budget should be, then it can start just like Canada started their care programs because that's what Canada did. Like in 1947, one of the, you know, Ottawa, one one of the provinces just said, "Look, we know what it's going to cost. We think we can cover it." But you can't do that in the United States of America until you're transparent about all the costs. And if you start doing that, the two problem children are the insurance companies and the PBMs because they have all the leverage, right? The PBMs control the formularies for 250 million lives, and the insurance companies that own the PBMs control the plans, the insurance plans for just as many lives. And so they have all the leverage. If you a divorce formulary from PBMs, they lose that leverage, and you don't need them for formulas anyways. And so it goes down to a direct cost. And if you're transparent on that and the same thing on health care, if you simplify the payment terms, all of a sudden you can get to single-payer, but it's on a municipality, county, employer, or whatever.

No, I'm going to make a hard turn. Did I do that? No, it was three, but that's okay. I'm making a hard turn from—It was pretty good. Healthcare is the hardest one. You asked me like what am I think about the social—my honest opinion about healthcare is that like it seems like we—our current system is the worst of both worlds, like like a a more free market system with a with a big uh a big safety net for like catastrophic would be better. Socialized would be better—like like our system is like it's taking the worst of both of the of the combos. Um I'm making a hard turn into Blue Sky. Uh this started because you DM'd me and you're like, "Why aren't you on Blue Sky?" My response to you was like, number one, I like fighting, as you can tell right here, and I don't want to be in a bubble just because I I enjoy fighting, and number two, like like bubbles feel toxic, and like the types of fighting that happen in bubbles is not the type I like, and like people are nitpicking me all the time, and I'd rather be going across, you know, ideological perspectives and cross—and like that's my issue with it. uh two months later cuz it's taken us a while to make this happen. You Blue Sky—you skied basically my critique of Blue Sky. So where so where are you at? Welcome aboard. But where are you at on it right now? What's the what's the solution? I'm disappointed. Right. It didn't have to be that way. They they took the path of not trying to bring in new users that have different viewpoints. They knew that there was a they had a big base in users that wanted ideological purity. They knew it, right? I've talked to them. Um, and they started to bring in a couple verticals—like the NBA's got a great vertical. Econ Sky is really good. Book talk—Book Sky rather—is really good, right? But they made no effort to go bring in other people. It's not too late. I actually just wanted to kick them in the ass, right? Because it's disappointing. To your point, I want to fight with the people who disagree with me, and I want to have in-depth conversations to see if I can change their minds or they can change mine. I don't want to have smarmy Vice President JD Vance going on just to be a dick about it.

Really? I did. I did though. Why not? He said—I I love that. He's really smarmy about it though, right? So much. It doesn't just—like I know. It just doesn't—like it's like gh—like it's like it wasn't a real attempt to engage though. It just—No, of course not. Yeah, of course it—of course. And I I even quote-tweet him and quote-tweeted him and said, "You're lying," right, when he talked about pharmacies paying um for um—I forget what it was—but um—I just quoted him and said, you know, "You're lying," right? I don't believe you, and that's fine. I want that opportunity no matter what the platform because you know, if you do it on Twitter, you're just—your your replies are just going to get destroyed for a month. We're going to close with rapid-fire MBA, but just first I have to do it, so I'm not going to ask you the obvious question like because I know that you're going to—I know you're going to duck it—or the two obvious questions, but before I get to either of them, it's like, so what % chance are you going to run for president? I know you're not going to say you're going to. Is it zero? It's not zero. It's 2%. 0.0 nil. Zero. My family, my wife repeats that cuz like there was the the Bloomberg article that just came out and asked the question, and she—she—someone sent it to her, and then she saw it. She's like, "What was the Dumb and Dumber thing? You're not even going to like be like you're saying there's a chance, you know, one in a 100,000." Yeah. So, you're saying there's a chance? No. Okay. So, I'll say it's not 100% zero. If all of a sudden Trump was on the ballot for a third time, right? What if—What if it's—What if it's JD and Don Jr.? That's not enough to get you off the couch. No. All right. No. I think you're li—Here's why I think you're lying to me. Um I think you're an honest person, but you showed up at the dorkiest Never Trumper conference in DC where the where the Proud Boys came and protested us. Made it kind of interesting. I love the Principles First Guys. They are great. But I'm like, only someone who at least thinks they might run for president would show up to a this. No, that wasn't it at all. It was the exact opposite. It was like these people have no idea how to sell. They have no idea how to convince people who don't agree with them. Right? It's easy to convince people in the church, right? Praise the Lord. We all agree. It's hard to convince people that the reason you like to go to Twitter because it's more fun, but it's harder, right? You have to find a path in order to do it. That's why I do these things. I've done it for the Mod Squad and all these other groups, right? Because you've got to be able to tell them you can't just because Trump—you can't just say no to everything Trump does. That is not an approach, right? You've got, you know, maybe it's this stop clock is right is right twice a day, but you've got you've got to be able to say, "Okay, he was right on this. He was right on this." And you can't call people who who support Trump a cult. You know, well, they're just—the truth is the truth. No. Okay. Well, let's talk about—No, but let's talk about that. Right. So, like one of my buddies when Trump first ran, I was like telling him because I've known Trump for 25 years, and I'm like, "Dan, you know, guys in mid-50s, like why?" D, let me tell you something, Mark. I've been voting for politicians my entire life. And you know what they've done for me? Nothing. You know the definition of insanity? Well, his mind, that's all that matters, right? That's all that matters. Has he come around though? Trump's done nothing for him now. No. So, it seems like he's in a cult. Hasn't come around yet. It's been 9 years. What has Trump done for him? You're a white guy. You're a white guy in New Orleans, right? So, just a random white guy in New Orleans. You think that because of DEI, you or your brother, your uncle, your friend didn't get that promotion, right? He—So, he said he was going to do something about DEI. In your mind, he did it. You have a cousin that works construction, right? He's, you know, he thinks that he's not getting higher paying jobs. Yeah. Right. But he's thinking—coming into all this, right?—he's thinking, "I'm not, you know, these guys are on the corner, and I'm not getting that work because these immigrants, right?" So I want the border closed. Did Trump do it? Yeah. Now I want those guys deported. So maybe my wages might be a shittier job, but my wages are going up because—Did Trump do it? Yeah. So now tariffs, it's going to cost you more money. Yeah, maybe. But you know what? Those first three things that were important to me, bam, bam, bam, Trump got it right. And so I'm gonna give him the benefit. That sounds like a cult to me because it's like Barack—you could just be like, "Barack Obama got you out of the Iraq war." Is that—Are you not happy about that? We got—you know what? Do you have a nephew that's gay? We got gay marriage now. Joe, you got a tax cut from George W. Bush. Like like like every—you could do this spin for anybody.

Of course. Of course. But this is the here and now, right? And that also is the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. The Democrats always extrapolate what some anecdotal scenarios and say, "See, he's done it this number of times, so he's going to do it all the time." I don't think Trump voters think that way. Trump voters look at it and say, "This is me. This is now. This is what's affecting my life in in a simple way, right? The Iraq war, maybe I had some family there, and you know, you know, they're out now. That's great. Maybe, you know, we were had the great financial mess and he and um and um Obama helped fix it." Yeah. But that was—I don't remember back that far. Particularly, you know, if if I'm if I'm 70 years old, the average age of the Fox viewer—75, the average age—I'm I'm not hearing any of that [ __ ] from Fox, right? And if I'm going to an SEC school, if I'm going to um LSU, right, I'm not hearing any of that [ __ ] right? I'm I'm hearing you know all the you know—he kept fixed the EI—he you know took care of immigration—deporting the guys who are keeping my buddies—because I don't want to go—my buddies who don't want to go to college now—and so the point being is you have to recognize that's the reality—like we did the Shark Tank thing, and I went to LSU—knows Auburn—and it was like, oh my god, they were hating on me—like they were like all the—"Oh yeah, I don't I don't give a [ __ ]"—right? But it's you know—it's just interesting to know. And so I really really think that if the if the Democrats are going to understand why Republicans haven't just turned on Trump—like it makes so much sense to us that he should—you have to realize that he's batting 750. For most, particularly for white guys under the age of, you know, 50 50, right? Or 55, he's doing exactly what he said. And unless you realize that, you have no way to change. Have your wife call me. Um because I hear you on that. Um all right. Uh last thing. So, okay. You—these two—two rapid-fire NBA. You realize that you leaving the Mavs caused a butterfly—flapped its wings. Think about all the people you hurt. Everyone in Dallas. Every Lakers hater. Every tanking team that wanted Cooper flag. The bus family is gone now. Jay Moore is a billionaire now because of you. Like think about all of the impacts of that decision. What do you ever reflect on that? I mean, how insane is what happened? I am one powerful [ __ ] That was insane. You should have stayed. You should either stay with Freddy Kla as vice president. I do not like—I would have done it differently. In hindsight, I would have done it a lot differently. But the uh—I got to do Nuggets, and we'll leave. We're in a pickle, man. I feel like we're like on on the one hand—if if we're one play, we almost—we took Oklahoma City to seven. We're one player away from being NBA champions right now. On the other hand, that they got the cap. They got no cap space. They're stuck with all these. What do you do? And we don't have a GM. Well, A, isn't it insane we don't have a GM? And B, if you became the GM, what would we do? Help save the Nuggets. Well, first of all, your former GM was Calvin Booth, who hit one of the biggest shots in Maverick's history. Second, why are you a Nugget? I'm in Denver. I grew up in Denver. Oh, okay. Yeah, I live in Louisiana now. I grew up in Denver. Okay. Okay. So, the challenge for all teams right now is we're we're transitioning from the old CBA to this new CBA with the second apron, which isn't a hard cap, but it's pretty damn close. And so, teams have to all adapt. The the bad news is the good teams, it's going to be really hard to keep your good players. The good news is the bad teams are going to get better a lot faster because you're going to be able to get players for less and still stay under that second threshold. So, I think for the Nuggets, they're going to have to draft really, really well. They're going to have to keep Russell Westbrook, and they need one more score. You know, they need another Michael Porter Jr. for two for two, two quarters for a dollar trades. It was tough. He hurt—heard his shoulder, man. You can't put it on. No, I'm not putting it on him either. I'm just looking at our options. All right. I mean, Jokic—Joic—is the best player in the NBA, right? And we got a small window. It's not close. Yeah, it's not close. Yeah. Yeah. And you have a long window because it's not like he's super athletic. So he'll be able to be really good till he's 35, 36. It's so beautiful watching him. It's unbelievable. Oh, he's so amazing to watch. Unreal. Really been a joy of my life over this horrific political decade to have him. You know what basketball is? Is that right? Ball is you still hold. I try. I'm not that, you know, I never was that good. I was always the nerd. I was I was the play-by-play guy for GW's college basketball team. So I was always more sidelines, but I do love it. But still, but that that's not even the point. You don't have to be good, right? Just the feel of getting out there just solves all—I get out there with my daughter a couple times a week. We go down to the park. That's awesome. My son is 15 now, and he's now he's taller than me. He could finally beat me one-on-one, and it's the worst part of life ever cuz he talks [ __ ] like he'll have a ball. Even if he doesn't have a ball, he'll like do

A spin move. Oh my god. He's just killing.

I'm going to embrace it now, cuz I'm still talking [__] to my seven-year-old, making her cry after I win in horse, you know? And I'm and I enjoy that. It's good. But it's a good life lesson.

All right. I'm not letting you win a North. Well, but tell me if I'm wrong. Tell me if I'm wrong. Going out into the backyard, a gym, wherever, and just making some shots and watching the ball go through the hoop, this is everything.

I You're not wrong, Mark Cuban. I really appreciate you taking all the time, man. I really am.

All right. Come back another time. Everybody else, we'll see you back here on Monday. Peace. [Music]