Mark Cuban was sitting in the front row at Monday night’s presidential debate between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump at Hofstra University.
It’s no secret that Cuban, a wealthy businessman who owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, isn’t a huge fan of Trump. He criticized the GOP nominee while live-tweeting the Republican National Convention in July, and he issued a $10 million challenge to Trump last week.
Trump gave a controversial answer Monday when asked about his taxes during the debate, and Cuban was asked about it afterwards.
“I get audited every year. It takes me 45 minutes just to sign all the different taxes that I have to spend. And I tell my tax lawyers, ‘take advantage, do what the law recommends, but I’m not against paying taxes,’ ” Cuban told reporters after the debate, via Stefan Becket of MIC.
“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 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, after the shootings in Orlando, I had concerns about the LGBT community in Dallas, so I wrote a million dollar check to the city of Dallas to support a bunch of different programs.
“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. At some point you have to recognize you have to give back. And you have to realize this is a country that’s been great to us, and you just can’t take, take, take, take, take.”
The next debate is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 9.
Thumbnail photo via Frank Becerra Jr./The Journal News via USA TODAY Network
