Mark Cuban compares the 2016 race to the Miss America pageant

Maeve McDermott, USATODAY 1:46 p.m. EDT September 13, 2016

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Entrepreneur Mark Cuban compares the question and answer portion of the Miss America pageant to the upcoming presidential debates.

With all the dramatics of our current political cycle, comparing the 2016 presidential campaign with the Miss America pageant isn’t as far-fetched as it seems. And during Sunday night’s pageant broadcast, the Miss America interview section doubled down on political questions, with Miss New York’s subtle rebuke of Donald Trump among the night’s most eloquent answers.
One man who knows a little about both worlds is Mark Cuban, a celebrity judge for Sunday’s pageant.
“I kept thinking to myself, ‘I would hire her, I would hire her, I would hire her...’” the Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank judge told USA TODAY about the pageant contestants.
But the Miss America pageant isn’t the only high-stakes public Q&A session that Cuban is interested in. The entrepreneur, a Hillary Clinton supporter, has suggested debate tips to his candidate in interviews, though he's denied rumors that he has personally helped prep Clinton for her faceoffs with Trump.
As he explained, there’s a lot in common between how the presidential candidates and the Miss America contestants prepare to tackle tough questions live onstage.
“They’re similar in a lot of respects,” he said. “You don’t know what’s going to be asked. You’ve got to have an understanding of the topics you need to be aware of, and you have to have some depth and some knowledge of.”

USA TODAY

The Miss America judges made the best faces during the talent portion

USA TODAY

Miss New York won the Miss America Q&A with her answer about Trump

Clinton will be facing off against Trump, who previously owned the Miss Universe organization before selling it to run for office. With Mark Cuban allegedly mulling his own run for office, does his involvement with this year's Miss America follow a Trump-ian blueprint?
Cuban's answer was firm: "No, no, no, no, no."
“Let me just tell you, everything that Donald Trump does in terms of future presidential candidates, you do the opposite,” he continued. “There is nothing he has done that’s representative of anybody who has any common sense, what they will do in the future.”
“People have asked [me] as a businessperson and as someone who can afford to do it. I wouldn’t want to copy him. There’s nothing about him that I think has been positive in this election, and there’s nothing about him I would want to replicate at all.”
So don't read Cuban's newfound interest in pageants as him taking a page from Trump's playbook. “If anything, he’s probably set back the idea of a businessperson running for office about two decades," he said.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2016/09/13/mark-cuban-compares-2016-race-miss-america-pageant/90302176/