Do We Need an Elon of the Left? (feat. Mark Cuban)

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Martha listens to her favorite band all the time: in the car,

gym,

even sleeping.

So when they finally went on tour, Martha bundled her flight and hotel on Expedia to see them live.

She saved so much, she got a seat close enough to actually see and hear them.

Sort of.

You were made to scream from the front row.

We were made to quietly save you more.

Expedia, made to travel.

Savings vary and subject to availability, flight inclusive packages are at all protected.

Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Scott Galloway.

And I'm Jessica Tarlo.

So Trump's Liberation Day tariff sent shockwaves through the markets.

Stocks tumbled, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned

that they could drive inflation even higher.

So today, we're joined by entrepreneur, investor, and outspoken critic of Trump's economic policies, Mark Cuban, to talk about tariffs, the economy, and the state of American democracy.

Mark, it's always good to see you.

Always.

Thanks for having me on, guys.

So we're about a week out from Trump's Liberation Day.

When you saw that announcement, what was your initial reaction and what do you think it signals about the country's economic future?

I mean, my initial reaction was it was shock and awe.

And

it would just, it would be turned shortly.

And obviously, that hasn't been the case.

And I just think everything is so convoluted that it's hard to come to any conclusions right now other than it's really messy.

Well, speaking of messy, you've been advising people to stock up on everyday everyday items, including toothpaste and soap.

That sounds.

Well, no, let's take a step back there.

So I read this book back in college, How to Retire.

No, it was the only investment guide you'll ever need.

And one of the things it said was one way to earn a guaranteed return was buying in bulk the normal things that you use on a daily basis when they're on discount.

And so I said, okay, you know, stock up on things you have room to store, toothpaste, toilet paper, whatever, because tariffs are going to increase their price.

I wasn't suggesting they were going to go out of stock like they did during the pandemic.

It's just smart economics.

If you can save 20, 30, 40% to avoid tariffs and get a discount at Costco, you're making money.

It feels like with any volatility, there's an opportunity to make money.

I mean, I would argue,

I think most economists would argue that.

this on the whole is just bad for everyone.

There's few more elegant ways to reduce prosperity globally than tariffs, as far as I can tell.

But as an investor and someone who's a student of the markets and has done really well,

if and how has this changed your investment philosophy?

Or do you see any opportunities?

What is Mark Cuban doing right now with his portfolio?

So there's a lot of different things.

First of all, when Trump was elected, I sold most of my stocks and went to cash.

So I'm actually a tiny bit net short coming into this.

And so, you know, I didn't get hurt, except I own a bunch of Bitcoin.

So I got hurt a little bit there.

But overall, you know, I'm treading water because I'm long and short.

And so I went to cash just in anticipation that something like this could happen.

And so in terms of what I've done so far, I bought a little bit of Berkshire Hathaway and sold calls on it because there's so much volatility.

So not to get too in the weeds, but Warren Buffett went to cash.

And if I had a choice between having me invest my cash or Warren Buffett invest my cash, I'll have Warren Buffett invest my cash.

And then selling the calls when the VIX is up high, meaning there's a lot of volatility, then you get the greatest return on selling calls, covered calls.

So I did that.

And that was two days ago.

I want to talk a little bit about cost plus drugs.

And you've mentioned that tariffs on goods from India may cause you guys to have to increase prices.

Can you talk a little bit about what's going on there if you feel like the price hikes are inevitable and what the general ecosystem looks like for your company?

So there's a couple of things.

One, right now, the tariffs don't apply to medications so it has not been an issue but they're doing a study and we think that they will at some point so from a cost plus drugs perspective there's a chunk of drugs that we actually manufacture in dallas where it won't impact us at all and then there's drugs that we'll buy from canada um that may or may not be impacted and then there's drugs we buy from India.

We don't buy anything from China that would be impacted most likely if there are tariffs.

And we've already gone through the process.

And what we'll do is, you know, with costplus drugs.com, you go to the site, you put in the name, we show you our actual cost and our markup of 15% and a pharmacy and handling fee.

And we'll just add tariffs to the cost when you check out so that you know what they are.

So if it's a 10% tariff, it'll show up at 10%,

25%, whatever our actual cost out of pocket is, we'll just pass that on without any markups.

So we'll be straightforward and transparent.

But I think what's really going to be interesting, 80 plus percent of prescriptions are controlled by three pharmacy benefit managers.

And I would be shocked if they just pass through what the actual tariffs are without any markups or using it as a way to raise prices.

Do you feel like that's going to be an opportunity for your company to get even further reach?

Because I feel like so much that goes on in the healthcare sector is under the cloak of darkness and that you just show up and you see a bill and you're like how the hell did this possibly happen yeah without question i mean it's it's most likely a positive you hate to say that you know charging yeah i don't want to profit off sick people i'm just saying it's good for people to know actually how tariffs work and that the cost is coming straight to them yeah the issue is you know everybody can see what the tariffs are because they're publishing what the the tariffs are from any given company uh country but when you're buying your medications we'll probably be the only one that actually published our actual cost out of pocket for the tariffs.

And so most of the other pharmacy benefit managers won't, you know, won't show you that and will use it as a chance to exploit it.

And we won't.

So if they do exploit it at all, we'll look even cheaper and that's a benefit for us.

Elon Musk and Doge, your thoughts.

I'm all for Doge, right?

I think it's a great idea to cut government that's too big.

It's a great idea to cut costs.

It's too expensive, but you don't do it all at once.

That is the definition of lack of strategic thinking.

Because what happens is when you do it all at once, there's no chance for communities, cities, states to adapt at all or anticipate or put in processes or plans to help people find other jobs or to replace lost revenue.

And what we know is that small cities, towns, states, they're far more reliant on federal spending than bigger cities are.

You know, if there's a treasury office in the city of Parkersburg, West Virginia that has 2,000 people.

The city of Parkersburg, West Virginia only has 29,000 people.

And if you guess that

15,000 of them are working age,

already they've cut 100 plus people from that office.

If those cuts continue, that's a disproportionate impact on Parkersburg and the area.

You know, when you look at, there was somebody who published NIH cuts and the impact they had on different communities.

Iowa City, the home of the University of Iowa, lost $79 million.

You know, if it's maybe New York Unit, you know, NYU and the city of New York, it's not nearly as impactful as Iowa City, Iowa.

Or you're seeing, you know, in coal mining towns throughout Appalachia, where they've cut back on the monitors and the people who evaluate safety.

And

that has a significant impact on those communities when not only did they lose the jobs, but there's nobody dealing with mining safety for them.

And that just changes the whole culture of what they're having to deal with.

And so I just don't think I want smaller government, I want less spending, but you got to think it through.

If they would have staggered it and staged it over

12 months, 18 months and said, here's where our cuts are coming.

And Parkersburg, West Virginia, we anticipate cutting X number of people.

You can do the math to see what the impact is on your tax assessment, your tax revenue collection, and what services you may need to give up, how many people you may need to help find jobs.

But we're going to give you some time to deal with this before it happens.

If they had done it that way,

Elon, you know, might be a hero for doing it the right way.

But just slicing and dicing it, ready-fire aim is no way to govern.

And that's the way it feels right now.

A question I don't think I've ever

put to you, we talk a lot about on this and other podcasts, how young men in America are really struggling, have probably fallen further faster than any other cohort.

Four times likely to kill themselves, three times likely to be addicted, 12 times likely to be incarcerated.

Curious on your thoughts on what ails us in terms of struggling young men and if you have any thoughts on policy solutions.

I'm not really the most qualified one for that.

I mean, I have a 15-year-old son and I worry about him, but, you know, we communicate.

And what's interesting to me in some respects is all I have to do is look at his

Instagram and TikTok feeds, and I know exactly what he's into.

And right now, it's still sports, sports, sports, hot girl music, sports, sports, sports, hot girl, music.

And so, you know, you, you can get a good feel for what's happening with your kids, but it is a problem.

You know, I've read what you said and I agree with you that, you know,

there's just, there's so many different stresses and it's so easy to go down rabbit holes.

Like when we were growing up, there weren't these diversions where you could go down a negative rabbit hole that really impacts your personality.

You may, you know, may have been into sports or not been into sports.

You may have gotten your news from the local gossip at the water cooler at school or whatever.

But now you, you know.

the way algorithms are designed, you get more of what you get more of, you know, and if you're getting Andrew Tate and you're getting, you know, whoever else are in the manusphere there,

it could go bad.

And I think that's a real problem.

And, you know, if you're not in a position where you have somebody that can mentor you or guide you, it could be devastating, you know, that the whole adolescence thing.

I mean, it's, it's not, it's not fiction.

Yeah.

I mean, double tapping on that question, then also what you said about Elon Musk, as a political strategist, I always kind of go to that.

And you were such an omnipresent surrogate for the Harris Walls campaign.

And I'm curious as to now that we're, you know, a few months into the Trump administration, round two,

if you have any thoughts about like what you could have done better or what you wish that you had said or been able to communicate and to reach people about Trump and co and how we might have connected with young men better.

I mean, I'm like, no, I mean, there's a lot of things, particularly with young men.

I mean, I thought they lost it when they lost crypto.

I thought, you know, a year plus before the election, I said on Twitter that Gary Gensler could literally lose the election for Kamala Harris or Joe Biden at the time.

And as it turns out, I think that turned out to be factual.

And I'll tell you why.

Young men, white, black, red, green, whatever, they're not going to the banks and making bank deposits, you know, and writing checks like we did growing up.

They're opening up Coinbase accounts.

They're opening up Robinhood accounts.

And whatever income they have from their job, they're having direct deposited there.

And so they started buying crypto.

You know, Dogecoin is a great community and they were going online on Reddit going Doge to the moon and hanging out with their friends and buying a little bit of Bitcoin, hoping the price of Bitcoin would go up.

And along comes Gary Gensler saying, okay.

I'm going to just shut down crypto as much as I possibly can with the exception of Bitcoin.

And that's effectively just shitting on the net worth of almost every 18 to 29 year old.

And then since then, studies have come out and said 42% of men under the age of 29 own crypto.

And so across 245,000 votes in seven swing states, I think it made a difference.

And having since talked to some of her advisors, they think the same thing.

And, you know, I went to bat as much as I could to convince Gary Gensler he's making a mistake.

He said he didn't care.

It's not his job to worry about that.

I finally got through to the

Harris campaign that they needed to change on crypto, but they just kind of tiptoed through it instead of being forceful on it.

And I think that is one key area they lost.

I think, you know, just generally, nobody in that campaign knew how to sell.

They were up against one of the greatest salespeople of all time, you know,

the guy who could sell the proverbial ice to Eskimos.

And, you know, on the Harris campaign side, they couldn't sell dollar bills for 50 cents.

They just would not put in the effort to sell.

And, you know, they wouldn't go into tough places where people needed to be convinced the most you know when i was on the campaign i never wanted to talk to democrats i wanted to talk to republicans and independents and undecideds and kamlet just they would not let kamlet go into those types of places and obviously i didn't have enough enough voice

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now?

Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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What do you think if you were to advise the Democratic Party going to 26 and 28, what do you think is kind of the unifying message or messages?

i mean help people just literally get on the ground and help people if you agree with what i've said about parkersburg west virginia about um cattle farmers beet farmers in um nebraska um about you know people who've lost their jobs across the country go out and help them you know you can't use the t-word anymore you know trump when you mention the word trump it just triggers people you know it's it's almost like talking to somebody who's in a bad relationship and you knew it was going to be a bad relationship and they would never admit it's a bad relationship.

And the minute you bring it up, they get defensive.

And it's the same way with a lot of Trump supporters.

You know, and so rather than trying to convince them to change, because the only person who can change the mind of a Trump supporter is Donald Trump.

And so my feeling for the Democratic Party is you have to go on the ground and having the town halls is great, but the way you make those town halls impactful is by being in those towns and saying, okay, what can we do to actually help you?

You know, can I go find, can I talk to the largest employers and see if there's anything that we can do to help them?

Can I help, you know, are there any programs that I know of that I can connect people who have lost their jobs to help them find new jobs?

You know, can I, you know, put pressure on that local Republican House member to realize that they're in a catch-22.

They either have to support their local constituents or Donald Trump.

You can't do both because they're on opposite sides of the spectrum.

So going out there and actually doing things for people, that's what builds momentum, in my opinion, because

it helps in two ways.

One, when people say, what's the Democratic Party doing?

You just trot out all these people and let it and leverage the virality of social media.

If I'm trotting out people that said, yeah, I voted Republican, but this isn't about Donald Trump.

This is the fact that the Democratic Party in the state of Iowa helped me get a job when nobody from the, you know, from the Republican side or the White House even cared if I got fired.

You know, somebody helped me get this program or that program and put those people online and just flood the zone with videos of interviews like that so that people see it continuously.

That's part one.

And part two of that is by putting all these Republican House members in a catch-22.

right doge is killing your local community doge is is killing your the tax revenues that you're creating.

And here's the services that the mayor said were going to be cut.

What are you going to do about it?

Because if either they go against Doge and against Trump

as a result, or they're going to lose in the midterm.

So it's a no-lose situation for the Democrats.

And that gives them content to do what really matters, which is flood the zone.

You need to have nonstop examples of people that the party helped so that they become the party of the people.

That's really what makes you you the party of the people.

I mean, there's thousands of hundreds of thousands of people getting fired and some percentage of them are, you know, women who are pregnant, people who have, you know, chronic illnesses and serious diseases.

And they're just saying, okay, you get to go on COBR.

No, let's push for something that gives them longer health benefits.

You know, if you're pregnant, you get health benefits, you know.

till you've given birth plus however many months.

If you have a serious illness, we will make sure that you have your government health benefits for as long as you need them, et cetera.

So doing those things for people, I think, really gives you content, but also you're doing the right thing.

And doing the right thing still matters to people.

And people want to see that in their social media feed.

And I think that will build a lot of positive groundswell for the Democrats.

It feels like you're describing the moral moment, as Corey Booker put it last week during his epic speech.

Do you feel like Democrats are meeting that moral moment?

No, I don't.

look to me parties are far less relevant than they used to be.

You know, if you look at the Republican Party, they zig and zag on whatever Donald Trump tells them to zig and zag on.

The Republican Party is now the family business for the Trump family.

And I think until there's a frontrunner for the Democrats, you know, it's hard to define who you are as a party because, you know,

You're defined by your actions.

The Republican Party is defined by one person, Donald Trump.

It doesn't matter what anybody else does.

And there's not that one person.

So the Democrats have got to have that moral moment, that moral high ground, but define themselves through action.

And

when you do the right thing, when you help people, people ask,

who's helping me?

And why are you doing this?

And they in turn support you.

And I think

that gets the Democrats where they want to go.

So

speaking of candidates, I've asked you a couple of times if you have any interest in running for president.

So I want to ask it in a different way now.

Imagine in two and a half years you looked into a crystal ball and in two and a half years it ended up that you were running for president.

What series of actions or events up into that point would you believe had to have happened such that you'd be running for president in two and a half years?

Nice try.

That's great.

I like that one, Scott.

Yeah, it was a good try, right?

I just don't see any series of actions at all that would get me to that point.

I truly want to change healthcare and I truly think I can.

And I think I can have more impact there.

And I I just, I don't have the temperament.

I got to be honest with you, Mark, I think you're a little bit full of shit.

You're out there.

You're out there.

You're very public.

You have this platform around the biggest issue in America, healthcare.

You're sort of either purposely or accidentally positioning yourself as the anti-Musk, like the billionaire we need.

I mean, quite frankly, just from an exterior perspective, it looks like you're leaving the door just a touch open in case you feel at the moment as an American, who's someone who's blessed, who's recognized huge prosperity, that you might decide, given the right atmospherics, to jump in.

No, you know, I put my family first and I just, they've been very adamant that, you know, they don't want me to do it.

And even if two and a half years from now they change their mind,

I just don't see a path there.

I like being in the discourse.

I like having influence based on the quality of my ideas as opposed to the size of the checks I write.

And I don't write any checks to politicians ever.

Yeah.

So, you know, I like that part of it.

I like that perspective.

I couldn't see myself going through all the bureaucratic nonsense that comes with the job.

I should warn you that what Scott wanted you to do is say, well, should do you, are you thinking about running Scott?

Because he's high on that this week.

Galloway 28.

Galloway for president.

Love and project.

Chicken in every pot of Gallagher and every cupboard.

Your question, Josh.

I want to, I'm mindful of your time, and I just wanted to quickly ask you about kind of the manosphere and the media landscape, because you became really great at doing the interviews.

And as someone, you know, as a liberal that works at Fox, I was thrilled to see, you know, someone that wanted to, like you said, you know, take the engagement to the people that actually are persuadable or need to hear something.

I can't do it.

Sorry.

Can you come back later?

Okay.

Sorry, I'm in a hotel.

No turn down service for you.

No turn down service for me tonight.

Hopefully you still get a chocolate on your pillow

but on the manosphere right

yeah or just like what the media landscape looks like for us going forward do we need a joe rogan of the left i don't even know what that is yeah i don't i don't think so i don't think joe rogan is of the right or theo vaughn or jake paul is of the right like i did all but joe rogan i did all those podcasts i mean i had to i had to blast doing all of them because they all you know they're just it's just guy talk you know they want to talk about girls sports, gambling, crypto, all the bro stuff,

cool tech.

And obviously, I'm comfortable with that.

The Democrats just didn't have anybody who fit.

And when you go and talk to those podcasters, it wasn't that, you know, they like policies or anything like that.

It was just like, he's gangsta.

That's what one of them told me.

He's gangsta, right?

He doesn't give a shit, right?

You know, I'm down with that.

I, you know, I don't, there's nothing I really liked about Kamala and Trump, whatever, you know?

And so it wasn't so much that the left needs something to offset what the brocasts are doing.

It's more they just need a candidate who feels comfortable talking to them because they'll talk to everybody.

Every single one of them said, we'd love to have Kamala on, love to have him on, her on.

And her staff didn't want to go for it.

Yeah, she just said, follow up on that.

I think she really blew it because Joe Rogan, I think he would have been, I think he would have, my sense of Joe is he tries to set his guests up for success.

I don't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, I do too.

Just on that question of media, do you see any

I know you're you're backing Skylight, a new equivalent to TikTok.

So talk about why you're backing it, but also just in terms of the media landscape, we're obviously, you know, podcasting appears to be playing a bigger and bigger role.

Any thoughts on the media landscape?

So media encompasses a lot of different things, obviously.

On the social media side, you know, I'm really active on Blue Sky because it's a distributed network.

It's not owned by any one person.

It's got 35 million users now.

And so it's not quite at a tipping point.

It's had the network effect, but it's not quite at the tipping point,

which I think it needs to get to 60 or 70 million users to really start to have the X level impact.

But what I really like about it is

it's moderated because you know when you go on X, you're going to i'm going to get anti-Semitic responses.

I'm just going to get a lot of dumb shit.

And when I'm on Blue Sky, I'll get engagement and I can have a normal conversation because I know if anybody says something really, you know, off the wall, it gets moderated out or I can block them or report them and then they're gone.

And so you can have

different types of conversations.

You can really interact with people.

Now, it's not to say that it's everybody's really, you know,

really sweet and nice all the time.

Like, you know, a third of my responses to anything I post are going to be, you know, we'll eat you last or billionaires are a policy failure and, you know, shut up and go home, rich guy.

You don't get this.

And that's okay.

You know, it beats hate speech, you know?

And so I think the counter to.

you know, right-wing media, if you will, is having Blue Sky really succeed.

I think MSNBC has done a great job supporting it.

I think CNN is blowing it by not being active there because it does lean left.

And so you've got a lot of support there.

But in terms of

Skylight Social, it's just complements what Blue Sky does by giving it more media and the ability to create and post media more easily and more quickly.

And so that's why I support him.

And he got a really nice product that everybody should try.

Cool.

I wish that we had more time because I want to talk to you about the left-right divide on social media because I live between both worlds and it's so icky there.

But our last question, and we ask all our guests this, what's one issue that makes you rage?

And what's one issue that you think we should all calm down about?

What makes me rage is the whole anti-empathy thing because, you know, people will accept things they disagree with if you show them some empathy.

And that applies from right and left.

From the left, the identity politics, you know, there was no empathy shown to white males who thought that they weren't getting jobs because of DEI.

And I'm a big supporter of DEI, but you can't do identity politics and try to cancel people.

It just won't work.

And there's no empathy, you know, being shown to the left, you know, from Trump, you know, and all the things that Elon is doing.

And so, and Elon talks about being anti-empathetic and it being a weakness.

I mean, somebody's got to start being nice.

And it's got to come from both sides.

What's interesting to me is both sides have trigger words.

And you've got to learn, you know, if you want to be a politician this day and age, if you want to be a leader in this day and age, if you want to have an impact in this day and age, you want to deal with substance and not just find the trigger words and try to make it appear like you're,

you know, you're fighting.

You know,

I just, because it's always Trump sucks, Trump sucks, Trump sucks.

Okay.

I can't argue with it, but it accomplishes nothing.

You know, woke sucks.

You know, woke sucks, woke sucks, woke sucks, woke sucks.

All right, don't disagree, but it accomplishes nothing, you know?

and so i'd rather see people you know try to put feet on the ground and do things like we talked about earlier and it it does gets me upset that there's just no empathy anywhere agreed something to calm down about um something to calm down about um the luca trade

that was the i want to do the whole show on the luca trade's been raging about that yeah not half as outraged as i was jess trust me well i yeah and you could actually like speak to nico harris and i can only kind of hate like

hate tweets about him um that's crazy to trade i thought it was so interesting that you pointed out that there's this lack of understanding of slovenian culture 100 that under and i don't know i don't know the slovenians that well but i i knew that you shouldn't trade luka doncicz and like three days before after he bought a house there is a baby now he did a good job man it just yeah it was heartbreaking and as we have this conversation tomorrow we he comes back to dallas for the first time so it's going to be really are you going to be there for it of course i'll be there for it.

Okay, good.

Because

I told him every time he goes to the foul line, I'm going to boo him and he'll get really mad at him.

And then afterwards, we'll crack up because, you know, he's a good guy.

So I can pick on him.

And I love seeing Dirk follow him also to be supportive.

It's such, you guys have such a great basketball community there.

Anyway, Scott's bored now.

Thank you so much for joining us.

My pleasure.

Always, always interesting, always insightful.

Thanks for your good work and keep on keeping on.

I think a lot of us in the center really think you're an important voice.

Well, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

And you guys, the same.

You guys always surprise me because you come up, it's one thing to come up with ideas and insights, and then it's another thing to find the data to either support it or realize you were wrong.

And you guys tend to do that all the time.

So that makes a big difference.

Thanks, Mark.

Thank you.

You got it, guys.

Thank you.

See you soon.

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