A billionaire not named Donald Trump has weighed in on a potential presidential run, and this one already has a few policy ideas he is willing to share.
Billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and frequent panelist on ABC’s business-themed reality “Shark Tank,” talked at length in an email exchange with CNBC’s Eamon Javers about the current presidential field, his ideas for America’s highest office and what it would look like if a billionaire ran the country.
“I get asked every day,” Cuban wrote. “It’s a fun idea to toss around. If I ran as a Dem, I know I could beat Hillary Clinton. And if it was me vs. Trump, I would crush him. No doubt about it.”
Cuban says he would be a “3 comma” president, a reference to the number of commas needed to write “$1,000,000,000.” He said he understands Trump’s mentality because only someone with a similar net worth to The Donald can grasp why he thinks he is worthy of being president.
“Rich people just have a little more arrogance to think we know more than everyone else,” Cuban wrote.
He also wrote that Trump, who leads the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings, appears to know how to reach voters better than the rest of the presidential field.
“There is no question the game has changed and Donald has a much stronger command of it than the rest of the candidates,” Cuban wrote. “Most future voters will get their news from their Facebook, Snapchat, Cyber Dust, Instagram, Twitter feeds. They open their apps and see what’s there. They don’t go looking for depth and explanations. If you as a candidate can’t find your way into those feeds, you basically don’t exist.”
Cyber Dust is Cuban’s own messaging app.
Cuban went on to talk about what a President Cuban would do in office. He wrote that he would first decide which social issues were more personal than presidential and set them aside, because they have “have nothing to do with running the country” and “are personal and family decisions.”
He then listed the five most important issues he would look to tackle: income inequality, college debt, overly complex taxes, cybersecurity and broken equity markets. The last two seemed particularly important to him.
“How we deploy bytes and the superiority of our national hackers is far more important than bombs or bullets,” Cuban wrote. “You want to stop a bomb? Hack it.”
As for broken equity markets, the businessman wrote: “Investors are ceding control of the markets to stock market hackers. That’s a huge problem.”
Cuban acknowledged that despite all his and Trump’s tough talk, he recognizes what being president of the United States would actually entail.
“No matter how smart or arrogant you think you are, I can’t imagine anything more difficult or more humbling than making life or death decisions,” he wrote. “Whether it’s someone like me, or a Trump, the first time someone dies because of a decision the president made, I think all that bluster goes out the window.”
“If we have a 3 comma POTUS, it would not take long before the office humbled him or her,” he added.
These comments come at a time when candidates like Trump and neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who come from backgrounds outside usual political spheres, are leading the Republican race in national polls.
Cuban does have some presidential experience to fall back on: He played a POTUS in Syfy’s “Sharknado 3.”
