In March 2016 the above-reproduced meme, which showed Mark Cuban talking about Donald Trump, started once again showing up in social media. It quoted Cuban as saying:
I don't care if he says the wrong thing. He says what's on his mind. He gives honest answers rather than prepared answers. This is more important than anything any candidate has done in years.
While Cuban did actually say this, his comment was made in July 2015. The platform on which Cuban made the remarks was purportedly made via Cyber Dust (an app created by Cuban that automatically deletes messages) which made subsequent verification difficult. A full and slightly longer comment could be found on a 28 July 2015 Washington Post article:
I don't care what his actual positions are. I don't care if he says the wrong thing. He says what's on his mind. He gives honest answers rather than prepared answers. This is more important than anything any candidate has done in years.
Subsequent comments referenced by Cuban on his Facebook page led to a dead link, but a Business Insider article quoted the entrepreneur's commentary on the state of the Republican party:
"I would prefer to be a Republican," Cuban wrote in the post, which was flagged by The Dallas Morning News. "I want smaller government. I want smarter government. Just like most Republicans. Put aside that I disagree with Republicans on most social issues. The Republicans have a much bigger problem that will crush them in every presidential election until this changes."
Cuban lamented that those who disagree with the "consensus" were called fake Republicans.
"The Republican Party requires that all their presidential candidates conform to consensus," he said. "If you don't agree with every platform of the party, not only are you called a RINO, a 'Republican in Name Only.' You are considered unelectable in primaries and become a source of scorn on Fox News. That's a problem."
However, on 12 February 2016, Cuban told Bloomberg Markets he believed he would be a better president than Trump. The Hill transcribed some of the remarks, in which Cuban said Trump was better suited to the private sector and assessed the millennial appeal of Bernie Sanders:
Businessman Mark Cuban says he would make a better president than Republican primary front-runner Donald Trump.
“Should I be in Donald Trump’s position? I think I’d do a better job," the tech magnate and owner of the Dallas Mavericks said Friday on “Bloomberg Markets.”
Cuban also said surging Dem presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is appealing to millennials. He said that while younger voters have an entrepreneurial streak, they also care about social issues.
“I think this is part of the attraction of Bernie Sanders, because you would think, ‘Why are kids so into somebody who’s a self-proclaimed socialist? ... when you look at the most successful companies ... inevitably, and I’ve invested in many of these companies, they have a social component to what they do,” he added, citing companies like Toms Shoes, which donates a portion of their profits.
Cuban's February 2016 remarks led some to poll him against Trump in a hypothetical election. Cuban retweeted:
What would happen if Mark Cuban ran against Donald Trump for President? https://t.co/6jTDfrKolz
— CivicScience (@CivicScience) February 15, 2016
The link led to an article on the web site CivicScience:
Before I type another word, I need to disclose that Mark Cuban is a formal advisor to CivicScience and a mentor to me personally. I also know that the odds of Mark running for President this year are near-zero. None of that stopped me from exploring the concept ... After hearing the Bloomberg comments, we launched a nationwide survey of 2,061 U.S. adults, pitting Cuban and Trump against one another in a hypothetical presidential election. [Suffice] to say, Donald Trump is fortunate that Mark Cuban or someone like him isn’t in the race.
These numbers show a potential head-to-head race that isn’t even close. Cuban would win comfortably.
When we dug into the demographics, the reasons are pretty clear. Cuban beats Trump handily among self-identified Liberals (78%-22%), women, anyone under age 45, minorities, urban dwellers, and people with a college degree or higher. He wins among self-identified “Independents” by 10 points.
It's true that Mark Cuban made the statement attributed to him in this meme, but the remarks occurred several months before they circulated and originally appeared on a mostly closed app, Cyber Dust. Cuban, since then, has opined that he would make a better president than Trump (going so far as to post the results of a subsequent poll about that very matchup), and also made favorable remarks about Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.