Why is Mark Cuban all over social media acting like Kamala Harris’s business czar?

A lot of billionaires seem hellbent on reelecting Donald Trump. In return, the Republican candidate has promised that their support will pay dividends. Given all this mutual affinity, it certainly stands out that one prominent billionaire is going all in for Trump’s Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.

Longtime Shark Tank star and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is estimated to be worth $7.8 billion, according to Bloomberg. While he claims to have not donated a penny to Vice President Harris’s campaign, Cuban has provided a valuable service with his enthusiastic evangelism. As his sales pitch to voters reaches a fever pitch, however, the more he helps, the more he begs the question of what’s in it for him—and whether there might be such a thing as too much help.

It’s unclear exactly how Cuban got involved with Team Harris. (Neither Cuban nor the Harris campaign responded to requests for comment.) But Cuban claimed in a recent New York Times interview that he’d already been friendly with Harris before she became the candidate, at which point people around her reached out to ask about “what feedback [he] could give in terms of business policy,” which ultimately “started a string of conversations.”

In the months since coming on board in whatever capacity, Cuban has been vigorously explaining, championing, and defending Harris in a variety of venues. He’s been participating in campaign calls, attending speeches, and going on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show whenever possible to make the case for why Trump will be bad for business or how Harris runs her campaign like a CEO.

In the dwindling days of election season, Cuban is now even joining Harris in campaign appearances, like the bizarro version of Elon Musk’s cameos at Trump rallies. (During Cuban’s first event, on October 17, he joked of Trump’s insistence that China will pay for new tariffs on imports: “This is the same guy that thought that Mexico would pay for the wall.”)

The medium where he’s arguably done the most work on her behalf, though, is X, formerly Twitter.

Swimming with sharks

For someone who runs multiple businesses, Cuban spends a lot of time in the X trenches. He is what one might call a “power user,” and he’s used the platform to powerfully advocate for Harris. Unlike within the friendly confines of Maddow’s show, Cuban often winds up going head-to-head on X with some of Trump’s fiercest boosters.

On any given day, when he’s not taking direct swipes at Trump, Cuban can be found pushing back against Trump advisor Stephen Miller and fellow billionaires like Bill Ackman, or getting into the weeds on Trump’s proposed tariffs with an editor at Breitbart.

While it’s doubtful that Cuban will convince any of these adversaries to switch sides, his forceful efforts in such face-offs could conceivably sway some onlookers.

What makes Cuban an ideal ally for Harris is that he speaks in the politically transcendent language of business. When Cuban, say, makes an economic case for DEI, it carries weight because he is the one making it. For Trump-leaning undecided voters who happen to be huge Shark Tank fans, it means something that Mark Cuban doesn’t seem to think Harris is a “radical leftist Marxist,” as Trump contends. When Cuban lays out for these potential persuadables precisely why he believes companies that import products will be more profitable under Harris than her opponent, it’s a boon to the campaign.

It also might be a boon to Cuban, though.

While the mogul officially ruled out a presidential run last year when he announced his upcoming exit from Shark Tank, his rising political profile might put him in line for a position within a Harris administration. Recently, he has indicated interest in a role within the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Though in an interview with Politico, he claimed it was just a trolling joke, the idea only underscores Cuban’s vocal antipathy to the commission’s current chair, Gary Gensler, who Cuban has long contended is too aggressive in regulating cryptocurrencies. Indeed, crypto is the area where Cuban’s support seems most self-interested.

Who wants to be a benevolent billionaire?

Ordinarily, Cuban comes across in his avid support for Harris as a concerned billionaire who fears the other candidate will be disastrous for the American economy. Occasionally, however, he’s given a far different impression. When an X user asked him earlier this week what dirt the Democrats have on him to inspire such robust advocacy, he responded: “That I own more btc [bitcoin] than you. And I know Harris is better for crypto than Trump. There. I said it.”

An answer like that makes Cuban seem less like a defender of American economic prosperity and more like any other crypto VC supporting whichever side seems most personally beneficial. (Or in the case of Tim Draper: both sides.)

Why is Cuban so confident Harris will be more bitcoin-friendly than Trump, who has been courting the crypto crowd throughout his campaign? He may just be reading Harris’s proposals, or reading the tea leaves, but the comments smack of inside info—or perhaps confidence that Cuban will hold some sway on the matter eventually.

The idea would seem more far-fetched if he weren’t regularly touting his closeness to the campaign, or the extent to which Harris is open to his insights.

Although Cuban has undoubtedly aided the Harris campaign, the more he talks on her behalf at this point, the more he runs the risk of making her appear beholden to him on economic issues. If that perception gained enough traction, it could lead some voters to decide, “I’m out.”