MARK CUBAN: Trump is that guy in the bar who will say anything to get laid
Billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban isn't holding back his opinion about his frenemy, Donald Trump.
"There's that guy who'll walk into the bar and say anything to get laid. That's Donald Trump right now to a T. But it's all of us who are going to get f---ed," Cuban said during an interview at the SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) Conference in Las Vegas on Thursday night.
"We go way back, and it's a love-hate relationship," he said when conference organizer Anthony Scaramucci asked Cuban about the Republican presidential candidate.
He continued: "Everybody's got that friend that you just shake your head at. He's that guy who'd get drunk and fall over all the time, or just says dumb s--- all the time, but he's your friend."
To be clear, this is not a literal description: Trump can be embarrassing, but he famously doesn't drink alcohol, so he's not likely to fall over drunk.
Cuban also offered Hillary Clinton some advice on how to run against Trump: Get a running mate like Mark Cuban.
"I would get a vice presidential candidate who's someone like me who would just throw bombs at Donald," he said. "And I would be like, 'Donald, I like you, we're friends, but you're a goddamn airhead.'"
Cuban praised Trump for tapping into the concerns of many ordinary Americans, but said that he did not have solutions for the problems he's identified.
"Being empathetic is one thing, and that's good," he said. "But given the office he's running for, trying to come up with a solution is even more important. And I don't think he's there yet."
Moving beyond politics, Scaramucci asked Cuban why he bought the Mavericks.
"Because I could," he said.
He continued:
I was a season ticket holder, and I was at the opening game for the '99-2000 season. And I'm like, "We're undefeated, I'm excited." We had Shawn Bradley, we were set. I was like, 'Wait a second, I can do a better job, and I can put my money where my mouth is now ...' Within a couple months, I owned the Mavericks.
It's hard to argue with Cuban's timing: He could afford to put his money where his mouth was because he had sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo in April 1999 for $5.7 billion.