Mark Cuban Would Consider VP Pitches from Clinton, Trump

Mark Cuban says he would “absolutely” consider becoming Hillary Clinton’s running mate this presidential election cycle, “if she’s willing to listen.”  

“The key would be that she'd have to go more to center,” the outspoken billionaire entrepreneur, reality TV star and owner of the Dallas Mavericks told NBC’s "Meet the Press" in a segment that aired Sunday morning.

Cuban also said he would consider joining Donald Trump’s ticket, and he gave a mixed review to President Obama’s two terms in office.

Frustrated Republicans have approached Cuban about becoming a third-party alternative to Donald Trump, according to news reports, but the 57-year-old told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd that it was too late to launch a presidential campaign of his own.

Born in Pittsburgh, but transplanted to Dallas in 1982, Cuban has dabbled with a host of startups and other businesses. In 2000, he purchased a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks, where he has been known to watch games from the stands and yell at referees when he disagrees with their calls.

Cuban also appears as “shark investor” on the ABC reality series "Shark Tank."  

In the interview Sunday, Cuban suggested that Trump’s whirlwind presidential run has opened the door to nontraditional candidates like himself.

“Well, it's certainly more of a consideration than it was, for the reasons we've mentioned before, that you don't have to be the perfect Stepford candidate like you would've been in the past,” he said.

Trump has a “real chance to win,” Cuban said, but criticized the New York real estate mogul for appearing to push seat-of-his-pants proposals. 

If Trump approached him about running for vice president? “I'd be, like, ‘Okay, Donald. That's great. Let's talk about it,” Cuban said. “But we're both going to have to dig in and really look and understand the issues so we can come up with solutions.’” 

He added that it was too early to say whether he would run for president in 2020 or 2024.

Asked to assess the Obama presidency, Cuban said the Democrat has “done a lot of good things,” such as expanding access to health care, but has also made foreign policy mistakes.

“From an entrepreneur's perspective, it's given entrepreneurs the chance to leave jobs they were stuck in and get insurance where they otherwise might not have had it,” Cuban said of the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature health care law. 

He offered few specifics on his foreign policy critiques of Obama.

But he didn't avoid a question about who he thought would win this year's NBA title: the Oklahoma City Thunder.