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Why Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban decided to go after Donald Trump

Way back in February, which feels so forever ago, Mark Cuban said he could totally see being Donald Trump's vice president.

The owner of the Dallas Mavericks went on The Ticket on Feb. 16 and told hosts Craig Miller, George Dunham and Gordon Keith that the Trump we were seeing on the campaign trail wasn't the Trump he knows; far from it. Said Cuban about his billionaire bud, if and when Trump secures the GOP nomination, he'll tone it down, because he's smarter and more "pragmatic" than your average fear-mongering madman with dictatorial tendencies. In so many words.

Cuban really liked Primary Donald around the time he was penning his Valentine's Day cards. The same day he talked to The Ticket hosts, he told WABC's Rita Cosby that the host of The Apprentice has "been a breath of fresh air from the perspective that he speaks his mind."

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Which actually turned out to be a bit of a problem, since Trump's main message since February, including last week in Cleveland, shouts that his mind is a dystopian hellscape where the only thing you can hear is every internet comment ever written being belched all at once by a crazy man sitting on a flaming golden throne held aloft by an army of shirtless Gary Buseys.

Hence the reason Cuban has turned on his once-upon-a-would-be running mate, going so far now as to tell Hillary Clinton's campaign how not to screw up what the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party are so hellbent on screwing up.

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"I said she needs to be on Fox News five time a day," Cuban said Monday, talking again to the morning-show hosts on Dallas' most popular sports-talk station, because at this point, that probably makes the most sense anyway.

Said Cuban on the eve of a Democratic National Convention that might wind up more chaotic, divisive and angst-ridden than its GOP counterpart, Clinton needs to visit the "devil's playground" just to prove she, unlike Trump, is capable of having a "rational conversation" with people with whom she disagrees. Because right now, said Cuban, "people don't even think she's human." And until she can get over that hurdle -- which, the way Cuban puts it, seems ginormous -- "the race will be a tossup."

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At the end of June, about a week after Cuban had cut Dallas police a million-dollar check to cover overtime costs following the Orlando mass shooting, I asked him via email why the switch from Donald Trump to Anyone Other Than Donald Trump. I asked specifically if it had something to do with the stakes being too high just to let the man he keeps calling an acquaintance get a free pass to the White House.

"Exactly," came the reply.

Cuban took a few more words on The Ticket Monday morning. Long story short, he told the morning-show boys: Trump's too dangerous to be president. And if saying so out loud means people stop coming to see the Mavericks play at American Airlines Center, that's fine with the man who owns the Mavericks and half of American Airlines Center.

"I am an American first, last and in between," he told the Morning Musers. "And I'd rather play to an empty arena than let happen what I think puts my kids at risk and puts this country at risk."

He said that, yeah, some "sports guy" talking about politics probably makes people nuts, which is why he stayed away from the talk shows as recently as a few months ago. So boring. So predictable. Celebrities talking about politics? Hey, man, it's not like he's Scott Baio.

And early on, it wasn't even clear how seriously Cuban took Trump.

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Back in December, Cuban wrote on his blog that The Donald was a man of little substance peddling "headline porn," sound bites the media could use to peddle a few papers (is that even a thing anymore?) and get clicks on websites where ads go for pennies on the nickel. He compared him to a man Cuban knew all about -- his former houseguest Dennis Rodman.

"I said back in July that what Donald Trump says is irrelevant," the Mavs owner wrote on Christmas Eve, when I am sure you were paying attention to this stuff. "It's how he says it that matters. I said back then that Donald Trump has changed politics forever. He obviously has. Donald Trump unwittingly introduced Headline Porn into the political process. Facebook turned it into poll respondents for him. Whether or not it will turn them into voters remains to be seen. But Headline Porn is here to stay."

Except now it's spread from the headlines to prime time.

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Cuban told the Ticket boys Monday morning that he tried to tell Trump early on that, look, it's one thing to speak in scary sound bites, but sooner or later he'll have to actually learn things about how the country runs. Cuban said he was especially interested in helping Trump back when he and Ted Cruz were the last men standing, because "Cruz would be really bad for the country."

He said he told Trump it was "time to actually dig into policies and dig into details."

But he didn't. Because he didn't want to or he didn't care or didn't know how to or maybe because he didn't even want to win (another Cuban theory). Instead, he kept the headline porn going all the way to Cleveland, where last week Trump aroused the base while delivering the most cringing thing to air on prime-time network television since Lawrence Taylor fractured Joe Theismann's leg on Monday Night Football.

"With three young kids, it scared me," Cuban said Monday, talking about why he turned on Trump. "Listening to what he had to say scared me even more. "

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By the the time Trump had become the presumptive nominee, Cuban said, he decided to hit the talk-show circuit and warn the people about The Trumpening. Trump asked him why. So Cuban told him via email: The GOP candidate for The Most Powerful Office in All the Land shows absolutely zero interest in nuance, in being analytical, in adding anything remotely resembling substance to the shouting, in learning what it actually means to be president of anything.

Deal-breaker stuff. So they broke up. And now Cuban's taking the gloves off on Stephen Colbert's show and talking about how Trump was a great candidate until he started talking.

"The only certainty is uncertainty in an uncertain world," Cuban said Monday morning.

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A campaign slogan for our times. For however long we have left, anyway.

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