Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, once asked him to dinner on Valentine’s Day.
Cuban was asked, during an interview on “The Jamie Weinstein Show” at the National Review Online, if he had met Cruz before and if Cruz had “rubbed” Cuban the wrong way.
“No. No, no, no. I mean, it’s just unanimously every conversation anybody has ever had about Ted Cruz was that he’s smart, they dislike him immensely, and they don’t trust him,” Cuban said in the podcast that was released Thursday.
Cuban said his one interaction with Cruz was when he said he would consider “anybody but Cruz” as a candidate during the 2016 presidential campaign. Cruz then reached out and invited Cuban to have dinner.
“I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m willing to have dinner with anybody.’ I literally, I’ll talk to anybody, because it helps me learn,” Cuban said. “And I was like, ‘When?’ He was like, ‘February 14th.’ I’m like — through his assistant, not him directly — I’m like, ‘That’s Valentine’s Day.’ And I think it was a Sunday. He was like, ‘Bring your wife.’ I’m like, ‘No.’”
Cuban has publicly said he is open to a 2020 presidential run, but told Weinstein he’s “90 percent against” running at this point.
