Mark Cuban says former President Donald Trump’s fans in Silicon Valley don’t just want him to be president again — they want him to be the “CEO of the United States of America,” with them as his board of directors.
“Watching what’s happening in Silicon Valley is insane,” Cuban said Monday in an interview with “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart. “It’s not so much a support thing. It’s more like a takeover thing, trying to put themselves in a position to have as much control as possible.”
Cuban has been one of the major business leaders who has outwardly criticized tech leaders’ and venture capitalists’ push to support Trump. He’s among the 803 venture capitalists who have signed a pledge to back Vice President Kamala Harris’s bid for the White House. On Wednesday, he will join more than 900 people to speak during a town hall hosted by cryptocurrency leaders organizing to help Harris.
“You are in this interesting position in your career where you’ve sort of evolved,” Stewart said to the “Shark Tank” star and Dallas Mavericks minority owner. “You are the Left’s favorite billionaire,” he added, which prompted Cuban to grin and flex his muscles.
His staunch support for Harris — and clear opposition to Trump — comes in stark contrast to the litany of high-profile tech leaders who have endorsed him. Part of that support comes from Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist who has ties to Palantir’s Peter Thiel and leads his own fund, Narya.
Several prominent tech leaders, many of whom have ties to crypto, have recently endorsed or financially supported Trump through aligned political action committees. That includes Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the billionaire Winklevoss twins, and the owners of Andreessen Horowitz — Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
“They’ve gotten to the point now where they feel like they should control the world and that there should be a CEO in charge of everything,” Cuban told Stewart. “Because they’re rich as f—k,” he added.
Cuban added that “you get to that point sometimes where I think they’ve lost the connection to the real world,” before pointing to Musk’s ambitions to reach Mars and, what Cuban calls, his attempts “to be the most influential man in the world.”
In addition to Tesla, Musk owns social media platform X and aerospace firm SpaceX, which owns global mobile broadband provider Starlink. On Monday, Musk hosted a “conversation with Trump that lasted for two hours after a series of technical difficulties he claims were caused by a cyberattack.
“My smartest friends, including those living in the San Francisco Bay Area who have been lifelong Dems, are excited about Trump/Vance,” Musk wrote on July 21, a few days after the Republican National Convention came to a close.