Gun control activist David Hogg and Democratic donor Mark Cuban mocked Republican supporters including Elon Musk for getting excited about a projected Donald Trump win in the presidential election.
Appearing on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the pair explained why the numbers behind crypto-based betting platform Polymarket’s odds were misleading.
“It’s like betting on the Mets. If you put enough money on it, the odds will change. But you can’t be a US citizen and bet on the U.S. election on Polymarket,” Cuban said, prefacing his comment with the admission that he was an investor behind the platform.
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“The irony of all this is that a lot of these Republicans are buying it thinking that’s going to determine the outcome of the election, and they’re just gaslighting themselves,” Hogg said to a roar of laughter and applause from the audience.
“I was looking at it and Tim Walz was up as well. It was the VP stakes and you could see it change.”
Experts have previously warned that Polymarket was being manipulated by a single individual pumping millions of dollars into backing Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A political analyst for Prediction News, Christopher Gerlacher, confirmed to the Daily Beast that Polymarket’s odds did not align with mainstream political polls, despite right wingers attempts to claim Trump was well ahead of Harris in the race.
One poll shared by Elon Musk showed Trump on a 54 percent vote share, while a recent poll by The New York Times shows the election as being on a knife edge with Harris only two percentage points in front.
Joe Scarborough, who was also on the Real Time with Bill Maher panel alongside Cuban and Hogg, looked surprised by what he had just heard.
“Wait, are you saying that those are all foreigners? Betting on our election?”
“Yeah, 100 percent,” Cuban replied.
“All foreigners?”
“Yeah, all foreigners.”
“Well, you know they influence our election in many ways,” Maher said. “I think the biggest hoax going is the idea that Russia’s collusion [with Donald Trump] is a hoax. It’s not a hoax. There was collusion.”
