My Diagnosis for Mark Cuban: Trump Derangement Syndrome

People are coming undone over Donald Trump’s first 30 days in the White House, and not just the lunatic fringe on the left, either. Billionaire investor Mark Cuban has been on a tear, going after the president on everything from his management style to his positions on jobs and healthcare.

Cuban has taken to cable news and Twitter to vent, saying “I don’t think he’s been able to show any leadership. I don’t think he’s taken any responsibility for the White House. And I don’t think he’s shown them any direction,” and unleashing a tweetstorm on Trump’s “issues” that resulted in a debate with yours truly.

On a Fox News interview, Cuban’s Shark Tank partner Kevin O’Leary took Cuban to task:

“[People] are sick and tired of politicians. They’ve had enough BS and they want people that are operators to run government, to make promises that they keep, and that was the groundswell that elected Donald Trump and he’s doing exactly what he said. It’s the first time in a long time a politician actually kept their promises and that’s what’s such a shock to everybody right now,” O’Leary told FNC's Jesse Waters.

It’s surprising that an experienced investor and executive like Cuban somehow doesn’t get that it takes more than 30 days for any leader, let alone the President of the United States, to do their job. I agreed with O’Leary, that Cuban isn’t doing himself or the nation any favors by publicly eviscerating Trump without giving him a chance to get a handle on what’s arguably the most difficult “CEO” job on Earth:

The Dallas Mavericks owner’s reply sparked an exchange on Trump’s aggressive tactics with the media:

… and on having a business-friendly face in the White House, for a change:

Finally, Cuban took issue with my recent Fox Business Critical Thinking column on How to Fix ObamaCare’s ‘Death Spiral:’

Cuban also seems to be worried that Trump doesn’t understand the big picture about how technology is changing the job market, saying this on the O’Reilly Factor last week:

“He doesn’t understand that the nature of work is changing. Technology is changing how people are hired, the jobs they’re going to do. He’s shuffling deck chairs on the titanic by going and talking to these companies and dealing with five, ten even 25,000 jobs at a time.”

He goes on to use Amazon as an example. The problem with his argument is that Amazon hired more than 100,000 workers last year and CEO Jeff Bezos plans to hire another 100,000 this year. Automation doesn’t seem to be having a negative effect on the ecommerce giant’s hiring, that’s for sure.

None of us can get inside Cuban’s head and figure out what really has him so incensed over President Trump, but in my opinion, he needs to chill out and let the man govern. As O’Leary said:

“If you go back and look at any administration switch-over, I don’t care which president came in, every cycle, every 4 or 8 years, you get pretty well chaos in the beginning. There are a lot of issues that happen and there are mistakes made and that’s exactly happening here. The way to measure any presidency is to wait and see how it plays out.”