“Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban has a lot to say about the tech and business titans who are flocking to support former President Donald Trump.
“Watching what’s happening in Silicon Valley is insane. It’s not so much a support thing. It’s more like a takeover thing, trying to put themselves in a position to have as much control as possible,” Cuban said in an interview with “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart that aired on Monday.
“They want Trump to be the CEO of the United States of America and they want to be the board of directors that makes him listen to them,” Cuban added.
For the tech billionaires, backing Trump is an extension of their desire to dictate and dominate the environment around them, Cuban said in the interview.
“They’ve gotten to the point now where they feel like they should control the world right and that there should be a CEO in charge of everything because they are rich as fuck,” Cuban told Stewart.
“You get to that point sometimes where I think they’ve lost a connection to real world,” he continued.
During his 2016 presidential run, Trump relied on venture capitalist and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel as his most prominent backer from Silicon Valley.
But things are a lot more different in 2024. Now, Trump enjoys the support from Silicon Valley bigwigs like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
“My smartest friends, including those living in the San Francisco Bay Area who have been lifelong Dems, are excited about Trump/Vance,” Musk wrote in an X post on July 21 about Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.
“I believe in an America that maximizes individual freedom and merit. That used to be the Democratic Party, but now the pendulum has swung to the Republican Party,” he wrote in a follow-up post on the same day.
To be sure, Cuban isn’t backing Trump in this election.
The businessman initially endorsed President Joe Biden before switching to Vice President Kamala Harris, who took over as the Democratic nominee after Biden dropped out.
When Harris unveiled Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, Cuban said the Harris-Walz ticket could have an edge over Trump-Vance because of their non-elite academic backgrounds.
Both Harris and Walz didn’t go to Ivy League colleges, unlike Trump and Vance who went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Yale Law School respectively.
“People are tired of the ideologues and hate from both parties. They want to vote for normal people they can relate to,” Cuban wrote in an X post on August 6.
Representatives for Cuban and the Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
