Billionaire entrepreneur ends speculation at Pittsburgh rally, opening speech by saying hello to Trump in Russian

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The battle of the brash billionaires is on.



Entrepreneur Mark Cuban used Donald Trump’s braggadocio to make the case for electing Hillary Clinton during a rally in his native Pittsburgh on Saturday.

“Leadership is not yelling, and screaming and intimidating,” said Cuban, the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and a panelist on ABC’s Shark Tank. “People like that in Pittsburgh are called a jagoff,” he added, using pejorative Pittsburgh slang. “Is there any bigger jagoff in the world than Donald Trump?”

The endorsement ends the speculation over who the self-described independent would endorse. Last month, Cuban threatened to vote for Trump if Clinton chose as a running mate the tough-on-Wall Street Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren. And in May, he put himself forward as a vice-presidential candidate, telling ESPN Radio’s Capital Games podcast he’d consider a spot on either ticket.

But on Saturday, there was no wavering.

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“I’m ready to vote for a true leader, I’m ready to vote for the American dream,” Cuban said. “I’m ready to tell the world that I am here to endorse Hillary Clinton.”

Cuban opened his remarks by saying hello to Trump in Russian, mocking the real estate developer’s praise of Vladimir Putin. He shared his success story with the rambunctious crowd, detailing some of his early business failures and offered the audience some advice. “What you don’t do – you don’t ask daddy for a small loan of a million dollars,” said Cuban, deriding Trump for taking, as he described it, a “small loan” from his father, a real estate developer in New York City’s outer boroughs.

Cuban visited Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters and has been talking with her campaign chairman, John Podesta, according to a campaign aide. On Thursday, Cuban called Podesta before Clinton took the stage in Philadelphia to accept the Democratic party’s nomination to say he was coming on board.

“I want each and every one of you to know … in Hillary Clinton’s America, the American dream is alive and well,” Cuban said in his final pitch to the crowd, gushing with Pittsburgh pride. “And there’s no place that knows that better than Pittsburgh because we are an American dream city.”

Clinton campaigned in Pittsburgh on Saturday evening as part of a three-day Rust Belt bus tour with her running mate, Tim Kaine. Bill Clinton joined her at the event, alongside Kaine’s wife, Anne Holton.

The candidate has brought her economic agenda to hard-hit manufacturing towns in hopes of undermining Trump’s populist appeal in the region. Together on the trail, Clinton and Kaine have hammered Trump repeatedly for not making his branded products in America. “He doesn’t make a thing in America except bankruptcies,” Clinton said at a rally on Friday.

On Saturday night, Clinton told more than 5,000 people who waited hours in line to hear her speak that as president she would make the wealthy pay their fair share. “Sorry, Mark,” she quipped.

Earlier in the day, the campaign buses rolled through Johnstown, a town in western Pennsylvania, a part of the state where Trump is hoping to win over white, working-class voters. Trump’s campaign said in a statement Clinton’s visit there was akin to a “robber visiting their victim” and blamed “Hillary-backed” international trade agreements for the town’s decline in employment.

Clinton said, continuing with an upbeat message: “My mission from first day to my last, will be to create more opportunity and more good wages that will give people a chance at their own dreams.

“We’re going to create jobs in Pennsylvania and across America, especially in places that have been left out and left behind.”