Billionaire Mark Cuban praised Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday evening in a social media post for supporting a bipartisan border bill, amid criticism from Republicans and former President Donald Trump over his handling of the US border.
At Shark Tank star and minority owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks, wrote in a post on Friday afternoon on X, formerly Twitter, that “Kamala Harris has said he will sign this partisan border bill. He is the only candidate to comply with the detailed border security plan.” Not long after the post was published , he corrected the typo to “bipartisan.”
The bipartisan border bill, proposed by Senators Kyrsten Sinema, James Lankford, and Chris Murphy — an Independent, a Republican, and a Democrat, respectively — was blocked by Senate Republicans in February.
AP Photo / Mark Schiefelbein
Trump is reportedly behind the nixing of a bipartisan bill in Congress that would have increased funding for the border and increased security earlier this year. The former president and 2024 Republican candidate condemned the bill, writing in a Social Truth post in January that it “doesn’t make sense on Security and Border Closure,” and is “a gift to Radical Left Democrats.”
On Tuesday, Harris said, “As president, I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed, and I will sign it into law, and show Donald Trump what real leadership looks like.”
With immigration and border security a major issue in the 2024 presidential election, Trump and his allies have criticized Harris’ approach to the border as Joe Biden’s vice president.
In 2021, Biden assigned Harris to lead the administration’s diplomacy with Central American countries to address the “root causes” of migration. The influx of border crossings during the Biden administration has led many politicians, mostly Republicans, to criticize the approach.
Earlier this week, the Trump campaign released its first TV ad focusing on the new presumptive Democratic nominee, calling him the “frontier tsar.”
Cuban, who previously backed Biden before dropping out of the race last month, recently joined a group of venture capital investors backing Harris’ new presidential campaign, called “VCs for Kamala,” which now has more than 700 people signed up.
The group’s website says, “We believe that strong, credible institutions are a feature, not a bug, and that our industry — and all other industries — will collapse without them. That’s what’s at stake in this election.”
In the X post, he added, “If the Republican candidate has explained his plan, and I have missed it. Please post it below. And for those who think it is impossible to think, he will be difficult at the border. Here are some statistics that compare . the previous administration to the Obama administration, as a reference,” links to a 2020 Pew Research article.
Kamala Harris says she will sign this partisan border bill. He is the only candidate involved in a detailed border security plan.
Here is a link to the full bill and summary. https://t.co/9L5VXL8gxs
If the Republican candidates have detailed their plans, and I … https://t.co/dYonXb9SaM
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) August 2, 2024
The article states that the Obama administration had the highest number of “illegal immigrant removals” in 2013, which was 432,281 compared to the Trump administration’s highest number of 337,287 in 2018. It also found that ICE arrests increased when Trump took office, the average remained higher lower than the majority of Obama’s tenure.
On the other hand, the report notes that “southwest border concerns more than doubled in 2019, driven by the increase in families.”
As of Saturday afternoon, Cuba’s post had been viewed more than 4.3 million times. In another post on Saturday, he reiterated his support for Harris, saying “he knows the job.”
Newsweek Cuba, along with the Trump and Harris campaigns, was reached for comment by email on Saturday.
