Mark Cuban: I went ‘rogue’ on front-row seat tweet

Billionaire Mark Cuban said he “went rogue” when he tweeted that he would be sitting in the front row at the first presidential debate of this year’s general election.

{mosads}The Dallas Mavericks owner told Fox News’s Megyn Kelly that he received the tickets to to take his 13-year-old daughter to Monday night’s high-profile debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He told reporters prior to the event that he “knew that it would get under [Trump’s] skin and drive him crazy” to see him in the front row. 

“I went rogue on that and I didn’t think it would blow up and then bam,” Cuban said about his tweet catching attention on social media.

Cuban, who’s a vocal critic of the real estate magnate, announced last week he’d attend the debate and sit front and center. To counter, the GOP nominee threatened to bring Gennifer Flowers, a woman with whom former President Bill Clinton had an affair, to the debate.

The Trump campaign and GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence later said Flowers wouldn’t be attending the debate. 

Analyzing Trump’s debate performance late Monday, Cuban said the New York businessman was “cool and calm” when he was talking about international trade deals and pressing Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, on her past support of these deals.

But he criticized the rest of his performance, arguing Trump didn’t answer many of moderator Lester Holt’s questions and failed to offer specifics.

“The rest of the debate he was counterpunching like he tries to do, but he never took control of a question,” Cuban said.

“More often than not, he didn’t answer the question and never got around to answering the question and you could tell it kind of frazzled him. When Secretary Clinton came back with specifics, he would just deflect and change the topic.”