Latest news with #VPvetting
The Independent
5 hours ago
- Business
- The Independent
Mark Cuban reveals why he turned down Kamala Harris's VP offer in 2024
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban has revealed that Kamala Harris invited him to submit vetting materials in order to be considered as her running mate last year, but he declined. In an interview with The Bulwark 's Tim Miller on Thursday, the host asked the former Shark Tank reality TV personality about rumors linking him to the failed Harris campaign. 'There was some green room gossip at MSNBC,' Miller said. 'You ready for this? You ready? I wouldn't tell you this if it wasn't pretty good. 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,' replied Cuban, who once supported Donald Trump but remained a prominent Harris supporter throughout the 2024 campaign while denying harboring any ambition to serve in her cabinet should she win. 'Why didn't you consider, I mean, you ended up there campaigning with her, advising her,' Miller asked. The Dallas Mavericks owner replied: 'The second part of that, my response was I'm not very good as the number two person. And so if 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 and kissing babies.' Harris ultimately chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice presidential nominee from a final three that also included Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. Walz initially enjoyed success with his attack on Trump and JD Vance, labeling them as 'weird,' and offering a friendly, folksy, blue-collar alternative that ultimately proved insufficiently appealing to prevent a Republican win. Miller told Cuban that he had sold himself short with that negative assessment of his own qualities. 'I don't know about that. I mean, I was talking to Pete Buttigieg a couple of weeks ago and I was like… I want to, you know, give you a time machine. We're going to go back in a DeLorean. Like, what can we do different?' he said. '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.' Cuban responded: 'I mean, obviously it would have been different. My personality is completely different than Tim's. My experiences, my backgrounds are completely different. I think I've cut through the s*** more directly. I'm not a politician. And so it would have been different, but it would have been awful. 'She would have fired me within six days!' he joked. 'It would have been better than the present situation, you know?' Miller insisted. 'Well, yes, that's true. But, you know, I really thought she was going to win,' Cuban answered. The interviewer concluded: '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 get that. 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 or whatever wouldn't have been meaningfully different in a way that's kind of hard to predict.'
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
NBA team owner Mark Cuban reveals he rejected stunning offer from Kamala Harris ahead of election loss to Trump
NBA team minority owner Mark Cuban has revealed that Kamala Harris ' ticket for last November's election could have looked very different. The former Shark Tank personality, who owns a 27 percent stake in the Dallas Mavericks, has shared that the former Vice President had reached out to him amid last year's Race to the White House. The 66-year-old claimed that Harris' team had asked him to submit vetting materials to be considered for her running mate in the 2024 campaign. But Cuban, despite being outspoken in his opposition of Donald Trump, surprisingly turned the Democratic hopeful down. The Bulwark's Tim Miller quizzed Cuban on the rumor Thursday, asking: '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?' Cuban, who campaigned for Harris, admitted that it was before going on to explain why he passed over the offer. Talked to @mcuban for tomorrow's pod and he tells me he declined an offer to be vetted for Kamala VP. What might have been! We also discuss the fallout of his decision to sell the Mavs but gotta wait til tomorrow for that. — Tim Miller (@Timodc) June 20, 2025 'The second part of that, my response was I'm not very good as the number two person. And so if 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 and kissing babies,' Cuban added. Harris ultimately selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate but was defeated at the ballot box by Trump and Vice President JD Vance. 'I mean, obviously it would have been different,' Cuban added. 'My personality is completely different than Tim's. My experiences, my backgrounds are completely different. 'I think I've cut through the s*** more directly. I'm not a politician. And so it would have been different, but it would have been awful,' Cuban joked, 'She would have fired me within six days.' 'It would have been better than the present situation, you know?' Miller retorted. 'Well, yes, that's true. But, you know, I really thought she was going to win,' Cuban replied. Cuban hit out at Trump in the build up to last year's election, taking aim at the president's golf game in an email to 'I can out drive him by 100 yards,' the 66-year-old Cuban wrote of the 78-year-old Trump in an email to It came after Trump had bizarrely claimed that Cuban has 'really low clubhead speed' and is 'a total non-athlete.' Typically Cuban has attacked Trump's business acumen, understanding of tariffs, and his failure to hold his 2016 campaign promise of building a border wall and making Mexico pay for it. 'This man has so little understanding of tariffs, he thinks that China pays for that. This is the same guy who also thought that Mexico would pay for the wall,' Cuban told an audience in the battleground state of Wisconsin. 'Did Mexico pay for that wall?,' Cuban asked the crowd, who responded, 'no.' In addition to his bitter tiff with the president over their golf games last October, Cuban has been highly critical of Trump. The entrepreneur campaigned for Harris in the buildup to her ultimate defeat at the ballot box last November and took aim at Trump's inner circle. 'Donald Trump – you never see him around strong, intelligent women, ever. It's just that simple,' Cuban said on The View last November. 'It's just that simple. They're intimidating to him. He doesn't like to be challenged by them,' Cuban added. Trump's national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the comments were 'extremely insulting to the thousands of women who work for President Trump, and the tens of millions of women who are proudly voting for him.' Cuban later apologized, saying he 'didn't get it out exactly the way I thought I did.' In August of last year, the wealthy 'shark' made it clear that his support had shifted from Trump to Harris after 'he got to know him,' according to Business Insider. 'I actually started off supporting Donald, and then I got to know him better,' Cuban told Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, during an interview last year. 'I was like, he's great - he's not a typical Stepford candidate. I thought that was a positive,' he added. 'But then I got to know him.' However, he was one of the first members of Camp Kamala to publicly concede defeat on election night, sending a message of congratulations to Trump The businessman sold a majority ownership of the Mavericks for $3.5 billion to the Adelson family in December 2023. Cuban still holds a 27 percent stake in the team.
