WHEN: Today, Thursday, September 26, 2024
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Billionaire Investor Mark Cuban on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Thursday, September 26. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/09/26/mark-cuban-on-vp-harris-move-to-the-center-she-believes-the-country-needs-to-come-together.html.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Got a lot of ground to cover with our next guest. I want to bring in Mark Cuban for his takeaways. Mark is a billionaire investor, of course, and entrepreneur. He’s also a support of Vice President Harris. So we know where you stand. I’m curious listening to her there and you called in a couple weeks ago to talk about what you thought she would be—
MARK CUBAN: Right.
SORKIN: Telling the public and we quizzed you. We went back a little back and forth about just how much you knew versus what the public knew. How much more do you think the public knows now? And how much more do you think the public should know?
CUBAN: Well, I think obviously they know more. She’s talking more. She’s given speeches. She was very clear about tariffs right there and she’s got 40 days to communicate other things. Remember, think of this as a business and she’s the CEO. She went from lack of favorability, lack of awareness and way behind Donald Trump right to here we are days later from where she started, she’s at worst tied, right? People on her economic policy — she was behind Trump 25 percent, now she’s behind 11 percent. So she’s making progress. And if she just continues along that trend, the trend is her friend, it means she’s doing the right things. And so, she’ll keep on communicating new ideas, new elements. She was a lot more specific on tariffs and where she stands the difference between her and Donald Trump to her point, Donald Trump will say what fits to the audience. When she you talk — when I talk to her team about different things, whether it’s healthcare, whether it’s tariffs, whatever it may be, she goes back and her team does a full analysis. She doesn’t just say yes or no. They really dig in to what she said what’s the impact.
SORKIN: What about but there is a critique that actually she will say whatever the audience wants, right? I mean, we look at the tipping that — the tipping thing that took place in Nevada. Given some of the details that we don’t have on certain things, is that because some of those details would be less favorable in certain audiences?
JOE KERNEN: Do you see the Elon quote? I don’t know what you think of Elon but—
CUBAN: I like Elon.
KERNEN: I like Elon, too, but the she was at 28 percent favorability–
CUBAN: Right.
KERNEN: And then as you say, things change. He’s all the way up to about 50 percent. I would just argue that filling in the blanks does not account for that move, and that the main — the media coverage has been so positive and almost, Mark, that it’s like we don’t have to worry about trying to elect this guy who is clearly not up for another four years, and it’s not Donald Trump. So they would have the left and the people that need a candidate would have embraced anyone at that point. And you know, ABC, it was 100 percent positive coverage of her, 92 percent negative of Trump. So, Elon says what — what changed? The media coverage.
CUBAN: Okay. First, what’s the most watched news channel? Who are the most watched and viewed and listened to podcasts? Who are the most watched and listen to—
KERNEN: Is it Fox?
CUBAN: Yeah.
KERNEN: Yeah.
CUBAN: Right?
KERNEN: OK.
CUBAN: I mean, it’s not close, right? The number one shows are all Fox. The number one podcast lean right—
KERNEN Even in spite of that she’s been able to–
CUBAN: Not in spite of that. Meaning — well, in spite of that, yeah.
KERNEN: Yeah, OK.
CUBAN: Meaning the mainstream media is not who you think it is. The mainstream media truly leans right.
KERNEN: Maybe that’s why it’s only tied then.
CUBAN: Well, maybe, right?
KERNEN: I don’t know.
SORKIN: Where do you think she really is in terms of what this election is? In terms of, in terms of the polls and the betting? You look more at betting sites. What do you look at?
CUBAN: No, you look at like, I’m an investor in Polymarket, right?
SORKIN: Okay.
CUBAN: Through a fund. And U.S. citizens can’t bet on there, right? So it’s kind of a meaningless number. Now, predicted I haven’t really followed, so I don’t know.
KERNEN: Right. I was — you know, we’ve disagreed on things. We go back and forth sometimes on Twitter. I just think it’s — I don’t know whether it’s good or bad that that there are half the people that under no circumstances, no matter what, would ever vote for Donald Trump.
CUBAN: Can you imagine why?
KERNEN: On the other half, this is where I’m getting.
CUBAN: OK.
KERNEN: On the other half, there are half the people that under no circumstances can look at what her comments have been in the past and there’s just — for whatever, just having gone back to — with me, the Dukakis days, of the McGovern days, there’s just no way that that — and I’m not speaking for what I would do now, but there are people who think it’s so patently far-left and progressive, they would never under any circumstances vote for Kamala Harris.
CUBAN: Yeah.
KERNEN: And here we are.
CUBAN: Right.
KERNEN: And have you convinced anyone to change?
CUBAN: Yeah, of course.
KERNEN: You’ve convinced people to change?
CUBAN: Oh, yeah, for sure.
KERNEN: Oh, I haven’t con — I can’t convince anyone.
CUBAN: Because here’s what I say, right, here’s what I think is happening: she’s learned. All of politics has learned from Donald Trump over the last 10 years. The way politics were done pre-2016 versus now is night and day difference, not so much in the Democratic Party up until Kamala Harris. She learned what he did. He took over the Republican Party. The way the Republicans were in 2015 is nothing like they are in 2024. Now, the Republican Party has basically become the family business. Kamala Harris has learned from that. She’s basically taking over the Democratic Party.
BECKY QUICK: That does not sound like a good thing, Mark.
CUBAN: May or may not be, right? But it’s a reality, right? In order to win, she’s not, she said yesterday, she’s not an ideologue. She’s open to all ideas from everybody, from business, whoever. That’s important. That’s the difference. And when you listen to her talk, you know, we talked about Donald Trump, her team really does vet even if it’s no tax on tips, they vet the whole thing, and it’s very consider—
KERNEN: But when Bernie Sanders said she’ll say anything to did the rest of the Democratic Party just go, you idiot, shut up, to what are you doing? Because he said she’ll move to the center but doesn’t — but she still holds dear all the things he holds dear.
CUBAN: Have you seen her talk to or about or with Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.
KERNEN: That could be calculated, too, Mark.
CUBAN: It could be calculated. That’s right. It wouldn’t be a bad move. But I truly believe, I truly believe she’s gone to the center of—
SORKIN: What do you think of the fact—
KERNEN: Really?
CUBAN: Yeah, because the country she believes and knows that the country needs to come together.
SORKIN: What do you think of the fact that neither of these candidates talk about the debt or deficit ever?
CUBAN: No, that’s a problem.
SORKIN: That it is a great giveaway on and the question is who’s giving away more?
CUBAN: Yeah, yes or no.
SORKIN: There’s a competition going on.
CUBAN: She is saying she’s raising taxes, right? She was very straightforward.
SORKIN: Right.
CUBAN: You know, corporate income tax, 28 percent, which is still cheaper than you know a tariff plus 20 percent.
KERNEN: But wouldn’t you personally rather stay at 21?
CUBAN: It doesn’t affect me one way or the other.
KERNEN: Not you know, for my business, for everybody else.
SORKIN: For the country.
KERNEN: For everybody else.
CUBAN: Well, no, you have to look at the deficit and the revenue has—
KERNEN: That’s not where we should go for it. I don’t think.
CUBAN: What’s that?
KERNEN: I don’t think that’s where we should go.
SORKIN: Where we could you go for it then?
KERNEN: I’d go taxing his loans that he takes on his billions.
CUBAN: Yeah. But you know what? During when and I don’t do that, right?
KERNEN: No, I know. You know the people that —
CUBAN: No, I know what you’re saying. When interest rates were near zero, net effective rate, right? Everybody did that because if you can’t make more than 1 percent on your return, it was easy to, right? Now with interest rates of 4 or 5 percent, it makes no sense. So you can do that and she’s not opposed to it, but it’s not going to generate as much money. I think there’s a lot more revenue available from taxes on stock buybacks, and because taxes on stock buybacks think about where the cash structure is in a company. If you have something to invest in R&D or whatever, you do it, right? If you have a company to buy or, you know, people to hire, whatever, you do it. If you can’t find a better way to invest your capital, you buy back shares. So it’s really saying, okay, let’s tax the buybacks and that’ll create a ton of revenue to reduce the deficit.
QUICK: It’ll either create a ton of revenue or it will change business behavior. Leon Cooperman was on yesterday saying that look, we saw the good stock buybacks, then with prices at high levels, you saw a lot of bad ones, too. He pointed out how much there bought back—
CUBAN: There’s always bad ones, right?
QUICK: Bought back at high levels. But if it does that, if it changes corporate behavior, you’re not going to have the revenue you would have assumed from those things.
CUBAN: And that’s fine too. That means they’re investing it or they’re paying dividends, right? So think about that. If it pushes them towards dividends, and I also suggested to ‘em, and I don’t know if they’ll do it, is rather than for a family of four, I think if you have income under $89,000, then your dividends are tax-free, right? So you bump up that amount to $250,000 or $400,000 because if a higher tax rate on stock buybacks pushes to dividends, then it’s actually tax-free money that goes into the economy. Remember when Microsoft did that special dividend of billions of dollars 20 years ago, that actually impacted GDP. So having big companies put money back in the dividends and now investors truly buying because they get a return instead of just hoping the market goes up, that’s not a bad thing either.
SORKIN: How do you think about industrial policy? One of the things she did talk about was investing in a in a number of different industries in a big way—
CUBAN: In a big way.
SORKIN: Over the next 10 years.
CUBAN: Yeah, could—
SORKIN: There are some people who say we shouldn’t have industrial policy like this and we’ve tried this before and it’s been a mistake and other people who say, do we need to.
CUBAN: Different world, different world. Our military dominance, our place in the world depends on our ability to invest in AI, period, end of story. Whoever wins AI has the best military, there’s no question about it. And private companies, while they obviously invest a lot, the Department of Defense obviously invest a lot. We need to do more. We cannot lose that battle or we lose everything. That defines our currency. It defines how we compete in the world. It defines our military. So investing that is critical.
KERNEN: There’s a piece out just recently about that there has not been a manufacturing boom, that there was post-pandemic for a year, but it’s been bad, it’s been bad for the past two years. The ISM, the index, has been contracting since 2022, right when the IRA was passed. So there’s been no expansion.
CUBAN: Yeah. But, okay, look there’s 500—
KERNEN: But are you sure that they I mean, this is my fear, Solyndra. That’s my fear.
CUBAN: Yeah, picking winners and losers, yeah.
KERNEN: Exactly. Intel we decide now, Intel can’t get out—
CUBAN: But now TSM no but TSMC is making what, 5 millimeter, three nano, whatever it is, chips already, and that’s needed, that’s critical, right? That’s critical for US security. But to your point, right, what is it, 75 percent of manufacturers have under 20 employees, right? There’s like 4,000 companies that have more than five manufacturing companies. Donald Trump is trying to come in with a hammer and say, you’re the nail. I’m going to hit you with a 200 percent tariff John Deere. Kamala Harris is saying, I’m going to give you incentives to manufacture more. Which do you think is going to work better with companies? Do you want to be underneath a hammer? Because when you put a 200 percent tariff on John Deere and then only a 10 or 20 percent tariff on our Chinese their Chinese competitors, their Chinese competitors are now less expensive than John Deere. And it’s not so easy. We saw what happened with Carrier, right, when in 2016, they said, you know, if you move down—
SORKIN: Right.
CUBAN: You know, we’re going to tax you more, 35 percent tariff back then. And what Carrier did, they just gamed the system, right? They just fired different employees.
KERNEN: Do you think any of the 40-year highs in inflation are attributable to price gouging? And do you do you care that that is the entire premise on—
CUBAN: No, you’re misrepresenting what she’s saying, Joe.
KERNEN: I’m watching her ads now.
CUBAN: Okay, so then let’s talk about—
KERNEN: You’ve seen the ads.
CUBAN: Yes, of course, right.
KERNEN: I’m going to end. I’m going to bring down—
CUBAN: Price gouging during a crisis.
KERNEN: Okay.
CUBAN: During a crisis.
KERNEN: What do you think caused the 40-year, do you have, do you think supermarket—
CUBAN: No.
KERNEN: Gouging had anything to do with—
CUBAN: No, no.
KERNEN: You think it was — it was putting too much stimulus on top of a supply constraint?
CUBAN: Yeah, both. Yeah, Biden and–
KERNEN: Then it just looks to me like you’re not they’re not being with this and they’re trying to deflect blame to corporations because of their record.
CUBAN: It’s still important. There’s going to be another hurricane. There’s going to be another tornado. There’s going to be another natural disaster and there’s 37 states that have lots of—
KERNEN: But the free market comes in and–
CUBAN: No, it doesn’t though, Joe.
KERNEN: It does eventually, it does eventually.
CUBAN: But eventually, meanwhile, 37 states have the same type of law, right?
SORKIN: Right. And what happened by the way, how do you feel about the credit cards?
KERNEN: You mean the 10 percent?
CUBAN: Mr. Socialist Donald Trump.
SORKIN: Trump wants to — credit card controls.
KERNEN: When—
CUBAN: There’s only one candidate has brought up price control, and that’s Donald Trump.
KERNEN: Even when we talk about what the tariffs are going to do, what in one case, we have we know exactly what his tariffs did the first time, 1.9 percent inflation. We know exactly — that’s where it was. That’s where it was throughout. The other thing, Mark, I still think immigration and illegal immigration is a huge drain on a lot of the jobs that we’ve added. There’s been no, net gain among natural born I’m not saying I don’t want immigration. We all love immigration.
CUBAN: Right, of course.
KERNEN: It’s made this, we’re all immigrants, we’re all descended from immigrants. But I don’t think you can have an open southern border.
CUBAN: No, I agree, and she agrees, too. She said the exact same thing.
KERNEN: She had a chance.
CUBAN: Yeah, but Joe, you know there’s a lot of COOs that when the CEO leaves for whatever reason come in take over and have completely different policies and approaches, right? That’s just the way it works. When you’re second in command, you do what your boss tells you to do. He delegates authority to you—
QUICK: But the border was supposed to be her.
CUBAN: Yeah, but still the same thing. It’s his policies. What he said to her was you go down and you use diplomacy to try to improve to try to reduce the flow the migration of people across the border, right? And when they finally came around, and it took too long I agree, but when they finally got there, now look at the results. It didn’t take a wall but yet the crossing numbers are where Trumps were when pre-pandemic, at the same number. So it worked. So what she did actually worked, right? And look let me just add one more thing because we’ll go into Haiti and all that kind of stuff, when did the civil wars in Haiti start?
KERNEN: We’re going to go I didn’t when did we go to Haiti?
CUBAN: We’re talking about we’re talking about illegal immigration—
SORKIN: Right.
CUBAN: And Haiti and overwhelming communities.
QUICK: But the Haitians were legal immigrants, most of them who came in.
CUBAN: Well, they were brought over under the different programs, right? But the point I wanted to make, they like to talk about no wars, right? When did the Haiti civil war start? In 2020, in May of 2020, during the Trump administration. What he could have done something to try to deal with that that and that would have preempted a lot of the problems that they’re having now that he’s talking about.
SORKIN: Let me talk, let me ask you about what could be the regulatory regime under Harris. You just saw Gary Gensler who was in the green room. We talked to him. I know you said at least publicly so far that you want his job.
CUBAN: Yeah.
SORKIN: Lina Khan was just on “60 Minutes” on Sunday and there were some interesting things that were said. There were some examples where she brought prices down especially in healthcare which is your world.
CUBAN: Right.
SORKIN: Some of that seemed egregious, but in the same time, there’s a whole bunch of CEOs and big businesses that think that they’re being unfairly attacked in deals that should be done that can’t be done. What do you think Harris does? And that’s something she has not addressed yet.
CUBAN: Well, she’s been very clear about the fact that she’s against regulation via litigation. She said it. I’ve, she’s had me say it for them, right?
SORKIN: Is that a veiled way of saying that Gary Gensler is legislating through lawsuits.
CUBAN: I don’t think it’s very veiled at all, you know? I think it is what it is. Now, in terms of Lina, I think she’s done some things right and wrong. I think her efforts in the pharmacy space have been right on. She’s done a good job. Her efforts to try to break up some of these mergers, I don’t agree with.
SORKIN: And not just — but I’m not asking what whether you agree with it. Question—
CUBAN: I don’t what she’s going to do.
SORKIN: And that and that’s a big question for the world of—
CUBAN: No, I get personnel is policy, I get that, right? But we haven’t heard anything from Donald Trump either, you know? All we’ve seen Donald Trump do is hire his relatives, right? RNC, here comes the daughter-in-law. You know who’s going to speak for him? His two sons. Want to come up with a new pro, hey, we got a new silver coin. Here come the sons, hey, we got Blockchain, we’ve got DeFi. Here comes another son. You haven’t seen them work with I mean, the again, the family business is now the Republican Party.
KERNEN: But, Mark, did I you’re asking a lot of people to make a big leap of faith on for example, I’ve got like 15 things, you’ve seen them, that they’re in ads for—
CUBAN: Three — yeah.
KERNEN: Well, you know, mandatory gun buyback or abolishing the filibuster or banning offshore drilling or no more private insurance companies—
CUBAN: You know, she—
KERNEN: Decriminalizing ill — so don’t believe she’ll do any of those things and then the things you don’t like that happened under the Biden administration you say she didn’t have any control over because she wasn’t CEO. So don’t take responsibility for those things that you did. What how about all the hot spots around the world?
CUBAN: So here’s the difference, another difference between Kamala and Donald, right? Donald says something and everybody else tries to explain what he really meant, right? He didn’t really mean all these things. This is what he’s suggesting, right? He’s just hyperbole. Listen to what Kamala Harris says. What she says is what she’s going to do.
KERNEN: But then you’re not going to go back and look at Trump’s four years compared to what the last four years that we’ve had.
CUBAN: But what about the years before that?
KERNEN: We know what he, we know what he did and we know there were no hot spots around world.
CUBAN: Yeah, but then you’re not talking about inheriting the Obama economy or—
KERNEN: Oh, come on.
CUBAN: Look, Obama was the deporter in chief, he deported more people. What is, what specifically, Joe, Joe, my turn.
KERNEN: Yeah, go ahead.
CUBAN: What specifically is he going to do for deportation? Is he going to get the national guards —
KERNEN: I don’t know how he’s, I don’t know how he’s—
CUBAN: You don’t think that’s important?
KERNEN: No, I just think that if — when she was unable to answer the question about, are you better off now than four years ago, I think that was illustrative—
CUBAN: Four years ago, literally, we were pandemic. It was an easy answer.
KERNEN: We can look at exactly what happened, he’s already been president and we can look at what happened when she was vice president, and it’s not good, the comparison.
CUBAN: Being the president Joe as you know is different than being vice president and it’s not close.
KERNEN: So she can take she can she can take credit for the good things that happened with Biden but she didn’t have anything to do with the bad things?
CUBAN: Donald Trump takes credit for things that didn’t even exist, right? The things that didn’t even happen. He forgets that we had to pay tens of billions of dollars to farmers because his tariffs backfired. He forgets about all the retaliatory—
KERNEN: The tariffs that are still on.
CUBAN: Well, no, no, we’re talking about farmers tariffs, right? We’re not talking about steel. Today, what did they talk about? They talked about eliminating EV because it’s, it’s a security threat? That’s smart, right?
KERNEN: They just said one minute. We need a bell like at right at the end of the one, ding! Back to your corner.
SORKIN: We had John Paulson on the broadcast a couple days ago, earlier this week and at the end, I made a reference to January 6th and to Mike Pence, and he said — not that he didn’t want to talk about, he just sort of brushed it aside as a separate matter. And the question is here we are talking about policy, right? We’re having real policy conversations.
CUBAN: Right, the underpinning is the guy—
SORKIN: I know, but my question is, how much we should actually how much do you think as CEOs who are watching this program, or just a voter, is supposed to think about the other issues. I think the Joe would say that that January 6 is not been—
KERNEN: People know what happened, it’s been litigated. Any—
CUBAN: Yeah, how could you—
KERNEN: The 48 percent that back him are—
CUBAN: What? I mean, the guy literally told his vice president, he called him a you know what he called him, right? He literally tried to get him to overturn an election. That should disqualify him it just for whatever reason people don’t—
KERNEN: In the heat of that moment, I still at that point, I think he really did believe that it had been stolen, at that point. I don’t know if he believes it anymore.
CUBAN: Look, I remember going to—
KERNEN: You know that in the past, there have been Democrats that have voted not to certify.
CUBAN: Yeah, that’s fine. That’s fine, but none of them—
KERNEN: Many times, previous elections.
CUBAN: None of them called the their vice president a pussy and said don’t certify the election, right? None of them have. He’s the only one to do that.
KERNEN: It as I said, it you got Stormy Daniels, there’s a lot of things—
CUBAN: I don’t care about his character, right? I don’t—
KERNEN: OK.
CUBAN: I don’t care about what he does in his personal life. I could care less. But you have to live up to your oath of office as president of the United States. You cannot trust that Donald Trump would do that. You talk about history he has ripped off more hardworking Americans than probably anybody else. Michael, down here, down the street, right, when Michael Cohen said he was instructed to short pay and that was a good thing, when at the end of the day, when Donald Trump stood up there talking about what was going on and everything, he didn’t say no that’s not true. He was smiling in the court, literally, he was okay. Do you know any CEO who would be okay with short paying a vendor and think that’s a good thing? Would you support any CEO like that?
SORKIN: Mark Cuban, it’s a longer conversation you got to come on back to the table. I beg you to come on back so we can continue this debate.
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