Mark Cuban On Trump, Breaking Up Facebook, And Antitrust

Updated on

CNBC Excerpts: Mark Cuban Speaks with CNBC’s Dierdre Bosa in Interview Airing Today

WHEN: Today, Friday, July 12, 2019

WHERE: Airing across CNBC’s Business Day programming

The following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with tech billionaire Mark Cuban and CNBC’s Dierdre Bosa which aired today, Friday, July 12 across CNBC’s Business Day programming. The following are links to video from the interview on CNBC.com:

Billionaire Mark Cuban on breaking up big tech, Facebook and more

Billionaire Mark Cuban on Trump and solving problems

Get The Full Series in PDF

Get the entire 10-part series on Charlie Munger in PDF. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or email to your colleagues.

Q2 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc

MARK CUBAN ON THE 2020 ELECTION:   

Right now, if the election was held today, I think he would win again. I think the real challenge is, the Democrats, whatever the number is, for the most part with two exceptions are just putting out politicians. And they're just-- they're just playing to-- to the evening news, to-- to cable-- to cable news. And that's a problem. You know, when I think of politics and tried-- and what I would look for, I try to ask what are the three things people care about when they wake up in the morning? Not what are the three things that are programmed on cable news each evening. And that's a disconnect that I don't think the Democrats have figured out. I think Donald Trump has recognized that he can drive the conversation right now and take control of it and the Democrats are just falling right behind and right in place and letting him drive the conversation. So, as of today, I think he has the advantage. But there's a long, long way to go and a lot can happen between now and then.

MARK CUBAN ON CANDIDATES WHO SOLVE PROBLEMS:   

DEIRDRE BOSA: Do you think that there's more room for billionaires in this political landscape running for President?

MARK CUBAN: I think there's room for people who will solve problems. I think that's a big-- that's-- a big part of what people are looking for. I think one of the challenges of the Democrats right now is that they put out these big numbers and they say, ‘Okay, for-- we'll spend a trillion dollars on buying back student debt. We'll spend 300 billion dollars on this, 200 billion dollars on that.’ But they don't say how they're going to use that money to solve problems.

MARK CUBAN ON THE SAME OLD, SAME OLD:

Look, when I think about why people voted for President Trump— I think they were smart actually in a lot of respects. They realized that when you vote for a traditional politician you get the traditional political things. And a lot-- the people who voted for Donald Trump didn't want the same old, same old. Yet, here are the Democrats, they're competing with each other to win a primary rather than trying to find solutions for the country. You know, at least there's two non-politicians there. Maybe they'll come up with something unique that'll drive people. But right now again, if the election was held today, I don't think people-- people want someone to fight the battles for them and I don't think they see that coming from the Democrats right now in traditional politicians. I'm not happy about it, but that's what I see.

MARK CUBAN ON BIG TECH BREAKUP:

People are afraid what the future impacts are going to be. And so, they just take it out on, ‘Well, let's just break up these big FANG companies.’ That's not what's going to solve it. And again, when you break these companies up you actually give them more power because there's nobody else out there that's small that's going to step in to their place. You'll just have a few more companies doing more of the same thing, but only having the protections of the anti-trust regulations.

MARK CUBAN ON REGULATION:

Who does it is is a big question. But in terms of regulation, I think we have to really, really be careful. The law of unintended consequences will smack us upside the head in ways we don't expect. You try to stop Facebook from selling data, when you try to put valuations on data, which-- I don't even know what that accomplishes.

MARK CUBAN ON INNOVATION:

I'm still-- more laissez-faire, where beyond privacy, privacy's a separate issue, but beyond privacy, we need to just encourage development and we need to encourage innovation like Node.io because that's how we're-- we're going to compete. The concept, to me, that Facebook is the end-all, be-all product for news sources or saving pictures or sharing with Grandma is crazy. Same with Instagram. They'll be preempted at some point. It's inevitable.

MARK CUBAN ON ANTITRUST ISSUES:

I don't see it as an anti-trust problem at all. No one has to use Facebook. You know, there's alternatives for search. You know, just because they've been able to develop a lot -- a big customer base doesn't mean it's anti-trust. And so no, I don't think it's an issue. I do think Facebook has got a lot of issues.

MARK CUBAN ON FACEBOOK:

I do think Facebook has got a lot of issues in terms of privacy and use of data. But we always have to remember the law of unintended consequences. I mean, people talk about Facebook not wanting to make data available to others. To me, it's scarier Facebook-- it's scarier if Facebook or Google or-- or others keep all the data to themselves because that gives them a significant advantage. So we have to be very careful in how we approach these issues.

Leave a Comment