Charlotte Wilder

USA TODAY

Hillary Clinton's campaign gave Mark Cuban a front row seat to Monday night's debate. It was a brilliant move by the Clinton staff; Cuban has been a thorn in Donald Trump's side ever since Cuban decided that there is "no bigger jagoff in the world" than the reality TV star and billionaire who has become the Republican presidential nominee.

During the debate, moderator Lester Holt asked Trump why he hasn't released his tax returns. Trump said he would release them when an ongoing audit is complete, even though there's nothing legally stopping him from doing so now. Holt turned to Clinton on the matter, and she hypothesized that maybe Trump is reluctant to make his returns public - as every presidential nominee has done for the past four decades or so - because he isn't paying federal taxes. Trump was forced to disclose some returns decades ago and it showed he hadn't paid them for some years.

"That makes me smart," Trump interrupted Clinton to say.

Cuban was having none of this. As a fellow wealthy businessman, Cuban said after the debate that he undergoes yearly audits and that complying with the system is an involved process. He then lit into Trump for not paying up and giving back to the country that helped him succeed in the first place.

"I get audited every year my taxes are - it takes me 45 minutes just to sign all the different taxes that I have to spend. And I tell my tax lawyers and everybody, you know, take advantage of - do what the law recommends. But I'm not against paying taxes. And I'll give you a perfect example. When the Dallas Mavericks were building a new practice facility which was just opening I had the opportunity to go to Dallas and and play different cities against each other to get different rebates and everything. I didn't do it. A couple years ago we had some issues in Dallas, I just wrote a check to the general treasury. This year we had, after the shootings in Orlando, I had concerns about the LGBT community in Dallas. I just wrote a million dollar check to the city of Dallas to support a bunch of different programs. I'm, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. There's nobody who's been as blessed as me and my family, so far, knock on wood, is healthy, and at some point you have to realizes you have to give back. And you have to realize that this is a country that's been great to us. And you can't just take, take, take, take, take, take."

Cuban has been pretty vocal about not looking for tax dollars to build the Maverick's new facility. He said in June that the city of Dallas has given him far more than he's given it, so he wouldn't be seeking public funding to offset the cost of the new property.

After ripping Trump, Cuban went on to say that he thought Hillary had a great command of the facts.