27 Sep Mark Cuban: Purposeful Liar
Mark Cuban is a liar.
I know this may not sound like much of an affront these days, in our sad, post-truth, post-reality culture. But it’s important, if for no other reason than it shows the lengths to which the ruling-class blob will go to try to protect its control of information.
If you didn’t hear, the other day, Cuban appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and said something that was a little…unconventional:
Cuban joined Joe Kernen, Andrew Ross Sorkin, and Rebecca Quick on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Thursday to discuss the presidential election and his support for Vice President Kamala Harris. During the interview, Kernen brought up criticism from Elon Musk of the media and cited a report from the conservative Media Research Center’s (MRC) NewsBusters that found ABC News had run 100% positive coverage of Harris and 93% negative coverage of Trump. ABC News hosted what is shaping up to be the only Trump/Harris debate….
“The mainstream media is not who you think it is. The mainstream media truly leans right,” Cuban said.
What Cuban meant by this is that Fox News is more popular than any other news channel, and, by extension, that means that the mainstream media – of which Fox is a part – is right-wing.
There are several ways to interpret Cuban’s assertion.
First, one could assume that Cuban was just struggling with logic, as he is sometimes wont to do. He thinks that Fox being the most popular news channel means that the media leans right, apparently never considering that Fox’s right-wing tilt is more than offset by the left-wing tilt of CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Gaia knows who else. Fox’s relative popularity is derived from the fact that it is the lone right-wing voice, while ALL the other networks lean Left. As the sole “alternative” to the mainstream spin,” Fox consolidates Right-wing viewers, while the others all split up the Lefties. Of course it’s the most popular. That only makes sense.
Second, one could assume that Cuban actually believes that the media leans Right, which is to say that he’s out of his mind:
Mark Cuban may have finally lost it.
Or maybe he just never had it to begin with.
There aren’t many reasonable, rational explanations for what Cuban said on television in a Thursday morning interview on CNBC. Trump derangement syndrome is one, a prolific, almost violent commitment to reality denial is another, and the third is that he’s conducting a months-long performance art exhibition.
This is what happens when you get so rich that no one is willing to tell you how terrible your ideas are anymore.
Finally, one could assume – as I do – that Cuban knew exactly what he was doing and exactly what Fox and other marginal Right-leaning platforms mean, both to the country class and to the ruling class.
You see, just a couple of weeks ago, Cuban said something else interesting:
Former Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban says he would buy both Fox News and X, formerly known as Twitter, if he could.
In a wide-ranging interview with Wired’s Lauren Goode, Cuban expressed interest in ownership of both media properties, despite not having the cash on hand to realistically pursue either….
Cuban and Goode quickly discussed the economics of what buying Fox News would look like, which they deemed to be upwards of $15 billion to $20 billion. Cuban said he simply does not have that kind of cash “sitting around.” His net worth, according to Forbes, is listed at $5.7 billion.
The conversation then quickly pivoted to buying X – which is also unlikely given its projected price tag and also who Cuban would need to buy it from. Elon Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion then rebranded the platform as X.
Mark Cuban doesn’t want to buy Fox News and Twitter/X because he thinks they’d be great investments. Heaven knows, Elon Musk hasn’t exactly made out like a bandit on X. And Cuban doesn’t want to buy them because he thinks they are the “mainstream media.” Indeed, he wants to buy them because he thinks – or rather, knows – that they are the opposite. They are the most prominent of a very small handful of outlets that challenge the mainstream narrative. They are the shining beacons of what the Right calls “free speech,” and what the Left and the ruling class call “misinformation.” He wants to own Fox News and Twitter/X for precisely the same reason that George Soros is desperately trying to buy up all of talk radio and the same reason that Brazilian Judge Alexandre de Moraes banned Twitter from his country: to shut the country class up, to deprive the people of their only sources of non-regime-approved information.
Mark Cuban is not stupid. As noted above, he struggles with logic sometimes and occasionally makes some bizarre public pronouncements, but he’s a very insightful investor/businessman. The other day on “Squawk Box,” he tried to change the definitions of well-known words, not so much because he wanted to undermine or discredit Fox News, but because he wanted to distance the real “mainstream media” (or “legacy media,” if you prefer) from the ruling class. He wants the rubes out in Nebraska and Iowa and the rest of flyover country to believe that what CNN and ABC tell them is the real deal.
Unfortunately for him, he’d already given the game away. In an unguarded moment, he’d already admitted that he knows better, that he knows that Fox and Twitter are “alternative” news. That’s why he wants to buy them. That’s why he wants them silenced. That’s why they all want them silenced.
Rest assured, “buying” them will be the least incendiary means by which the Ruling Class and its representatives will try to achieve this goal and shut up the alternative sources of information. It’s gonna get ugly.
