Bipartisanship makes the world go 'round. Nothing gets done in a democracy without it. Donald Trump isn't going away. Working with him is not surrendering.

Jeff Bezos and Mark Cuban both had interesting public moments this week, and at first glance they looked like two different stories.

Bezos sat for an interview with CNBC and said something that many liberals did not want to hear: Donald Trump, in Bezos’ view, has become “a more mature, more disciplined version” of the man who served in the White House the first time around. He also defended the basic legitimacy of wealth creation, pushed back against AOC’s claim that billionaires cannot “earn” their fortunes, and argued that business leaders should work with every president, regardless of party.

Cuban’s moment was even more visually jarring. He stood beside Trump at the White House to announce a major expansion of TrumpRx through Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs company. This is the same Mark Cuban who campaigned hard for Kamala Harris in 2024, called Trump unethical, and was mocked by Trump in return.

Bezos and Cuban are saying the same essential thing.

Not that Trump is perfect. Not that politics no longer matters. Not that ideological differences should be ignored. They are saying something more basic and more useful: in a country this large, divided, and complicated, you still have to work with the people who are actually in power.

You might even have to — gasp — work with people you don’t agree with or even like.

That used to be normal. Now it looks shocking.

Cuban’s appearance at the White House was a bit awkward because everyone knew the backstory. He spent 2024 campaigning against Trump. Trump mocked him. Cuban called Trump unethical. These were not two men with a long history of warm public friendship.

And yet there was Cuban, standing beside Trump because TrumpRx was adding more than 600 generic medications through Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs company, alongside Amazon Pharmacy and GoodRx.

When asked what Democrats should think of him showing up at the White House, Cuban gave the whole game away: “Democrats want cheaper medications, too. The goal is the goal.”

Exactly.

That is not a surrender. It is maturity. It’s statesmanship and sportsmanship.

Cuban has spent years arguing that the prescription drug system is broken by middlemen, especially pharmacy benefit managers. His Cost Plus Drugs model is built around a basic premise: buy generics directly, mark them up transparently, and stop hiding the ball from patients.

Trump, for his part, has been willing to use presidential pressure and public branding to force the drug-pricing issue into the open. Is TrumpRx a complete answer to America’s drug-cost crisis? No. It will help some people more than others. It is strongest for people paying cash for generics, the uninsured, the underinsured, and people trying to comparison-shop without being trapped in the usual maze.

But politics is not a magic wand. Progress often starts with partial wins.

Cuban understood that. So he showed up.

Bezos is making a similar point from a different angle. In his CNBC interview, he did not become MAGA. He did not renounce Obama or Biden. In fact, he went out of his way to say he had worked with every president and still calls Obama for advice.

His point was not partisan. His point was practical.

“I’m on the side of America,” he said.

That line is easy to mock if you are determined to mock it. But it is also exactly what business leaders should say. America needs people who build things, employ people, move goods, develop technology, and understand how systems actually work to provide input to whoever is in office.

That does not mean presidents should be owned by billionaires. It means presidents should listen to people who know how to make things happen.

Bezos also made another point worth taking seriously. When politicians do not know how to solve a problem, they create a villain.

That is the danger in the AOC argument that nobody can “earn” a billion dollars. It turns wealth itself into evidence of guilt. Of course some fortunes are made badly. Some companies abuse workers. Some firms rig systems. Some executives deserve scrutiny. But “some people behave badly” is not the same argument as “success at scale is immoral.”

Bezos’ burger example was useful because it was so simple. If one burger stand is ethical, and two are ethical, and ten are ethical, at what point does the business become a crime? When it has 100 locations? A thousand? When people love the burgers too much?

This is where Bezos and Cuban meet.

Cuban is saying the drug-pricing system should be fixed even if Trump gets some credit.

Bezos is saying the economy should be improved even if it requires working with a president many elites despise.

Both are rejecting the politics of permanent excommunication.

That is healthy. More of this, please.

We have spent years being told that cooperation is betrayal, that appearing in the same room as the wrong person means moral collapse, that every policy debate must become a character trial. It is exhausting. It is also useless.

The country has real problems: health care costs, drug prices, taxes on working people, government waste, housing, wages, crime, schools, immigration, debt. None of these problems will be solved by theatrical outrage. None of them will be solved by pretending half the country does not exist.

Democracy is not a system where you only work with people you already like.

It is a system where you work with the people voters actually chose.

That is what Cuban seems to understand. That is what Bezos seems to understand. And whether Democrats like it or not, Trump is the president. If he can help lower drug prices, he should get credit. If he is right about something, people should say so. If working with him produces results, then work with him.

The goal is the goal.

And the country could use a lot more of that.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)