On Monday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company co-founder and billionaire Mark Cuban stated that 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris has changed her views on many positions because “She’s not an ideologue. She is open-minded.” But acknowledged that she often won’t say what she learned from that caused her to change.
Cuban said that 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump has previously vowed to tax the oil industry out of existence and stated that “candidates change over a period of years. That’s one of the great things about Kamala Harris. She’s not an ideologue. She is open-minded. That’s why she’s changed. Donald Trump thinks he knows everything, he doesn’t change.”
Co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin then said, “Well, let me ask you, Mark, do you think that she should be doing more interviews, and more importantly, do you think that she should be talking about how she has changed, what she has learned? Because, in truth, oftentimes, she’s asked about how different — she’ll say, I’m going to be different than Biden, but she won’t really explain what the difference is or she’ll be asked about what she would have done differently in the past and she won’t give you actual, real examples or she’ll be asked about things before and she won’t say well, actually, I learned from this or that, and I — maybe we made mistakes and actually, that makes me a better candidate because of that.”
When Sorkin said that Harris won’t say she learned from things, Cuban responded, “Right.”
Sorkin continued, “For whatever reason, inexplicably, at least to me, she doesn’t — that is not the answer you hear. Oftentimes, it’s actually an answer about how consistent she believes that her perspective has been the entire time.”
Cuban responded, “Yeah. I would handle some things differently, but there are still two weeks left, and different stages of a campaign require different arguments. She went from being at a favorability deficit, an awareness deficit…12, 13 weeks ago, whatever it was, and being way behind Donald Trump, and now, they’re in a dead heat. So, whatever she’s doing, she’s caught up. And now, for these last couple of weeks, she’ll make the determination how best to communicate. But I think it really comes down to get out the vote, whatever she’s doing to get out the vote, that’s what matters, and I think that’s why she’s been going where she’s been going and doing what she’s doing.”
Later in the interview, Cuban said Harris has been “very clear” that she’s “going to be open-minded. She’s — again, she’s not an ideologue.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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