Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban has been a vocal opponent of former President Trump.
Cuban endorsed Trump’s previous opponents, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and Trump’s 2024 opponent, Kamala Harris, while berating Trump with insults dating back to 2016.
But Cuban was not always a Trump basher.
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Cuban supported Biden over Trump in 2020. (Getty Images)
Cuban has said he supported the former president when Trump initially launched his first presidential campaign in 2015. Cuban elaborated on his initial support of Trump during an interview with Vivek Ramaswamy on X Wednesday.
“In 2015, I was like, ‘He’s great. He’s not a typical Stepford candidate. I thought that was a positive,” Cuban said.
Cuban added that one of the biggest reasons he initially supported Trump was because he didn’t believe in Trump’s chances to actually win the presidency and was looking to simply make a statement about the state of American politics.
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban (Tim Heitman/Getty Images)
“A big part of that is I didn’t think he had a chance. I just wanted to kind of screw things up in traditional politics, which I’m not a fan of,” Cuban said.
Cuban was so enamored by Trump in 2015, the “Shark Tank” host even said he would consider being Trump’s running mate in the 2016 election in an interview with Business Insider in July 2015. Cuban previously praised Trump and what he stood for in a post on Cuban’s own “Cyberdust” social media app earlier that month, highlighting the fact that Trump didn’t come from a traditional political background.
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“I don’t care what his actual positions are,” Cuban wrote on the app. “I don’t care if he says the wrong thing. He says what’s on his mind. He gives honest answers rather than prepared answers. This is more important than anything any candidate has done in years.”
Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban walks off the court after Mavericks’ loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder at the American Airlines Center. (Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports)
But times have changed. Cuban quickly backpedaled on his support for Trump deeper into the 2016 election cycle and has hurled insults at the former president ever since.
Cuban pointed to Trump’s ethics for why he has opposed him as president since 2016 in the interview with Ramaswamy.
“He was unethical then, and he’s unethical now,” Cuban said.
Cuban then pointed to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as an example of his ethics.
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Mark Cuban and Donald Trump at a press conference to officially announce the Affliction M-1 Global “Trilogy” at Trump Tower June 3, 2009, in New York City. (Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage)
“The man told Mike Pence not to certify the election,” Cuban said of Trump. “The man has stolen from more hard-working Americans than any [president].”
Earlier this year when Biden was still the presumptive Democratic nominee, Cuban went so far as to say he would vote for Biden over Trump even if Biden was “being given his last rites.”
“If they were having his last wake, and it was him versus Trump, and he was being given last rites, I would still vote for Joe Biden,” Cuban told Bloomberg News in March.
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Jackson Thompson is a sports writer for Fox News Digital. He previously worked for ESPN and Business Insider. Jackson has covered the Super Bowl and NBA Finals, and has interviewed iconic figures Usain Bolt, Rob Gronkowski, Jerry Rice, Troy Aikman, Mike Trout, David Ortiz and Roger Clemens.