Mark Cuban praised Vice President Kamala Harris for her “beautiful” performance in her Wednesday Fox News interview with Bret Baier, noting that the Democratic nominee was three things former President Donald Trump would never be: “Strong, Smart and Measured.”
“When Brett went hard after her. She didn’t call him names,” Cuban wrote Thursday on X, formerly Twitter. “She didn’t quit the interview. She didn’t make things up. She never once complained the questions were tough. She never played the victim card.”
The outspoken billionaire naturally compared those traits to Trump’s. The Republican nominee fumed Monday about the interview after it was announced and said on his social media platform that he would have “preferred seeing a more hard hitting journalist” sit opposite Harris.
“She didn’t lose her temper,” wrote Cuban in his social media post. “She didn’t take the bait to diminish or talk down to Trump supporters. [He] has been the president and campaigning for 9 years. Kamala Harris has caught up to him in just 100 days. That speaks volumes.”
Cuban argued that these are the reasons “people want to vote for her,” including “so many Republicans and Independents” who have jumped ship from their former parties to endorse Harris, and said she “is everything her opponent is not and will never be.”
Rick Bowmer/Associated Press
While Harris supporters have echoed that praise on social media, her senior adviser David Plouffe described Wednesday’s interview as “an ambush.”
Pro-Trump voices, meanwhile, are arguing that it lasted under 30 minutes because Harris couldn’t handle the pressure.
Baier himself claimed afterwards to fellow Fox News anchors that Harris’ advisers motioned for him to end the interview early, and said he saw “four people waving their hands, like, ‘It’s gotta stop.’”
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Current polls show Harris beating Trump by a couple of points in November. While Cuban is correct that several prominent Republicans, including Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) and former Vice President Dick Cheney, have backed Harris over Trump, on the other side of the aisle, progressives like Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) have condemned her for the Biden administration’s ongoing support of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Cuban has long supported President Joe Biden and frequently advocates for Harris on social media. But he was once so close with Trump that he regularly held long conversations with him over the phone — and even pondered being his running mate in the 2016 election.
“I don’t care what his actual positions are,” the former majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks told Business Insider in 2015. “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.”
Cuban revealed on “The Daily Show” in August that he distanced himself from Trump before he was ever elected, however, when Cuban purportedly urged him to meet with small business owners to win voters over in person — only for Trump to decry the idea.
“He goes, ‘Donald Trump and Mark Cuban don’t go to people’s houses and have dinner. Are you kidding me?’” Cuban recalled. “That’s who he is.”