Overtime – Episode #710: Mark Cuban, Andrew Ross Sorkin

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

All right, he is co-anchor at CSM, CNBC Squawk Box.

His new book is called 1929 Andrew Rorsergin, and he's a minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks and co-founder of Cross Plus Drugs, Mark Cuban.

Okay, these are the questions from the people.

Leaked texts from a group of young Republican leaders.

Oh, I I mentioned this in the monologue, the young Republicans.

By the way, young Republicans, they're up to 40.

They're up to 40.

You can be in the young Republican Club.

I mean, you know, in Congress, you're young if you're 40, but.

28,000 offensive messages with racist, sexist.

Yes, praise for Hitler.

What are your thoughts on this?

Well, I mean, we all condemn it, obviously.

I would have two questions about this.

One, how representative is it of Republicans Republicans as a whole?

And two, is it cricket to read other people's mail even when it's gross?

Ooh.

I mean, everybody's going to get hacked at some point.

So you got to know that your stuff is going to be read at some point.

So

should you read it, particularly if you're a news organization?

Probably not.

But it's inevitable your stuff's going to get read.

Yeah, but I mean, it would be illegal to read my mail, to go into my mailbox and take a letter.

A letter.

Well, if you do the hacking, that's illegal too.

Okay, so here's the thing.

We were talking about this off stage.

Do you fire these people?

So you see the message.

It's not that you can't unsee the message.

You can't unsee it.

You've seen it.

Right.

This person's working for you.

Are they still working for you?

I think they're not working for you.

I think you have, I mean, it may be on a case-by-case basis, but I think...

You've got to fire them.

It's a complicated one.

Yeah, I mean, if you're somebody saying I like Hitler, I don't have a real problem with that.

I mean, even no matter how it got under my transom.

But my bigger question: like, how representative is this of the Republican Party?

Because all the Republicans I know would say, this is not us.

And

I used to say this: you know, like

to be a Republican, we certainly shouldn't say they're all racist.

But if you're a racist, you probably are a Republican.

Right.

Is that not right?

I don't know what to say.

You know, what's interesting to me, I'm in some chat groups where I'm the only moderate, right, and they're far, far right.

And they always talk about systemic racism being dead.

And if anything, if there's a positive from all this, this is just the proof.

Systemic racism is not dead.

I don't know if this is systemic, though.

Well, no, it's not.

This is not systemic.

This is not, this is people.

This is asshole people.

That's different than that.

Yeah, but we're not talking about two or three of them, right?

We're not even talking about five or ten of them.

But systemic, but

if it's in the law.

No, it's systemic.

In my mind, I could be wrong, right?

Or corporations,

companies, and if it's widespread, right?

Right.

Right.

I just don't think you get to these guys and these young Republican groups and it's not widespread, or you can't just dismiss the fact that it happens a lot.

What percentage would you put at?

I don't know.

You want to extrapolate?

I mean, that's the thing.

Are you going to extrapolate from this and say it's more than it is?

But it doesn't take everybody to be racist for an organization to be racist.

There will always be racists just like there'll always be criminals.

Right.

They're just, you know, people, they're a certain percentage who are always going to be assholes.

We don't want them on this show.

All right.

When will the government shutdown end?

It's amazing.

There's so much news that comes out of Donald Trump every week that this would ordinarily be a rather big story that the government has been closed now for two and a half weeks.

Are Democrats right to insist on guarantees on health care subsidies before to shut down?

well, that's the big issue.

They're holding out for health care help.

To me, this is back to the leverage story.

So who's got the leverage in this game of chicken?

And you look at what the judge said earlier this week, effectively saying, you know,

you can't fire these people.

That was something that I think Trump was trying to use effectively as leverage.

So do the Democrats now have more leverage?

I don't know.

I mean, I think that the truth is I think that Trump can actually hold out for a pretty long time before the entire country blames him or the Republicans.

And the question is, the flip side is, are you going to blame the Democrats?

I think what's happened is you're starting to see the new ACA rates, premium rates, come out now.

And the Democrats were betting that as people saw what their new premiums were going to be for the 12.5 million that are affected by the subsidies, they're going to get mad.

Because in a lot of cases, it's one thing to tell them your rates are going to go up, but when you're getting ready to renew and it's open enrollment in a couple weeks and seeing it and feeling it and understanding the impact on your budget, that's going, I think, favor the Democrats over the Republicans.

All right.

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Gold prices hit records high this week.

Oh, they did?

Yes, they did.

Oh, and

that.

That didn't sound good here.

That's not a good sound.

Usually gold goes up.

It's good if you're.

You're decorating the White House.

Gold goes up when you're worried about the value of the dollar going down.

That's the equation.

What has the dollar done?

But people go to gold when they are scared, right?

Yes.

It's so crazy.

Gold.

I mean, it's so entertaining.

I mean, what are you going to do with gold, right?

Walk around with a bar and hit somebody over the head?

No.

And then we slightly gold.

No, it's also like, I mean, I think I have some gold in my portfolio.

I don't actually have it in my, right?

It's just says, it's still something just right on the ground.

Right, it's still digital, right?

Yeah.

Right.

It's still like I own gold.

Okay, but

are you a Bitcoiner?

Because people say that's digital gold.

I understand.

I'm in the Warren Buffett camp of you'd be much happier owning a little piece of land that you could farm because it actually produces something.

Whereas you own gold.

I have a little piece of land, and I'll tell you what I produce.

I'm going to have some right after the show.

Oh, no, no, no.

I'm all down on the farming thing.

To have a little stand on your farm.

Okay.

Putin and Trump are going to meet in

Hungary, and Putin is apparently going to suggest a Putin-Trump tunnel

from Alaska to Russia.

What do you make of this?

Why?

Well,

it's a show of friendship.

We're going to have to.

So Sarah Palin will have someplace to go and look at things.

I don't know.

It's like, you know,

we're going to.

I don't know.

I prefer to cruise around that area.

Right.

Well, that's how our ancestors got to America.

They crossed the Bering Strait back

when, back in the day,

when it was a land bridge.

Now we want to go back to that.

I'm just looking for partners.

Okay, is philanthropy really a public good or is it becoming a way to buy influence and policy power, as Lauren Powell Jobs suggested in a Wall Street Journal article today that Steve Jobs would have.

I thought that was the most fascinating piece, because you had one of the billionaires in America publicly say that what all of this philanthropy in this country has been about, in part, has been about buying influence.

But there's two sides to this.

I think that there has been a lot of philanthropy that's been about buying influence, but there's a lot of people trying to sell influence.

And so when you think about all of the

philanthropic institutions, universities and others, what have they been selling the whole time?

They're selling influence too.

And so I think it's a two-way street here.

And as much as I love philanthropy, I want you, we all should be giving.

But the question is, why are people giving and what's everybody really buying?

When I give money and try to give money, I try to do as much as possible anonymously.

Sometimes, you know, the recipient will say, no, you can help us, you know, build our cause more and help our cause more.

But you're right.

You know, why would you put your name on a building or a hospital if not for leverage, for power, for information?

What's something you give to anonymously?

I have an organization, literally,

that when you get denied pre-authorization for surgery and it's done incorrectly, we'll we'll go figure it out.

So I get a group of people that's all they do is try to overturn pre-authorizations.

And you'll never know it's me because you don't know the name of the organization and I want it that way.

I like getting the emails from somebody saying thank you, but I don't need it

to tell, you know, this is the group and here's why.

It's just not the right thing to do.

Because the star is on the wall at the CIA.

Right, yeah, exactly.

If you're a CIA agent and you get killed in the line of duty, your name doesn't go on the wall.

You just get that white star.

Just the star.

I'll take it.

Yeah, hopefully, I don't get killed in the line of duty.

White?

White star.

I always thought you were a great white star.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

I appreciate your time.

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