Bulwark Takes - The Market Gained (Then Lost) $4 TRILLION on a Fake Social Media Post!

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

A fake tweet caused a $4 trillion market swing. Then the White House called it fake news. Sam Stein and Will Sommer break down the chaos, misinformation, and the madness of modern markets.

Hey folks, it's me, Sam Stein, Managing Editor at The Bullock. I'm here with Will Sommer, author of False Flag. We are here on Monday. I'm going to give you the specific timestamp because it's a real rollercoaster out there and I want you to know when we're speaking. It is 10.37 a.m. on Monday and we just witnessed something really incredible. Before we get into that, subscribe to the feed. All right. 10.37 a.m. on Monday. Over the past 10 minutes, the market gained and lost something equivalent of $4 trillion in value based, I think, on a erroneous social media report. We're rich. We're broke.

I felt elated and then totally dejected. I was just about to do some purchasing and selling, and my mind got confused as to which one I should be doing. Do you want to try to explain this one, or should I try to explain this one? Yeah, I can try. So obviously, today's a big day of uncertainty, as so many days are. The market's coming back from Liberation Day last week. The patient survived the operation.

As Trump said, it's stabilized. It doesn't feel stable. Over the weekend, Howard Letnick was saying, we're all going to be putting the screws in iPhones. So the market was plunging right at the open. And then this very well-followed financial account called Walter Bloomberg that has nothing to do with Bloomberg News. Wait, really? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's just a guy. So apparently Walter Bloomberg. I thought it was an automated Bloomberg account. Well, this is what's tricky. And this is a great way to run the financial markets or people make bets on is Walter Bloomberg apparently is just a guy who rips Bloomberg headlines for the most part. And sometimes he gets a catastrophically wrong. I was just reading that five years ago,

someone was saying, well, you know, the thing with Walter Bloomberg is most 95% of the time, it's just news from Bloomberg. 5% of the time, Walter's wrong. And unfortunately, you've made it like a trillion billion dollar bet on it. And it's disastrous. Wait, hold on. Is his actual last name Bloomberg or is that? No, he's just, I think, a Bloomberg enthusiast. Okay, gotcha. Okay.

So anyways, go on. So yeah. So this morning around 10 a.m. or so, Walter Bloomberg tweets. 10.13 to be precise. 10.13. Thank you, Eastern. Walter tweets that Kevin Hassett, who I believe is he's the chair of the NEC? Yeah, National Economic Council. So he so Walter says that Hassett

said that there would be a 90 day pause on tariffs for all companies besides or excuse me, for all countries besides China, China. And so the market surges on this announcement. And then Walter doesn't provide any source. No one knows exactly where this came from. But the presumption is that he said it somewhere on TV, Walter was watching and he blasted it out. Okay. And so the market just zips up. And so it was, it had, it had led just context. It had gone down at the start 4.5%. Everyone was just sort of waiting for how bad it was going to be today. And then suddenly we look up and it's green. It's up like 450 points. And we're like, whoa,

what happened? I mean, we're talking vertical, like just complete. I saw MAGA accounts saying art of the deal, art of the deal. They thought it was because the finance person in the EU said they were ready to negotiate zero tariff agreements. Charlie Kirk was out there being like, this is how it works. We got it. But that's not it. Not quite. Yes. It turns out, then the people started saying, wait, where's Walter getting this from? Where's this all coming from? And you look back at a Fox interview he did this morning where Kevin Hassett is asked, they say, what about a 90-day pause? And he goes briefly, yep, well, about that idea. Then he kind of throws water on it. But he said, yep. Will you do a 90-day pause? Would you consider that?

Or Bill, yeah. You know, I think that the president is going to decide what the president's going to decide. That moment where he says, yep, or like a yep, they say, oh, he's considering it. And everything else he says after that is like, well, probably not going to do that. But that brief moment where he says, yep, that that's what Walter Bloomberg appears to have jumped on. And that's what appeared to- So $4 trillion in market value. We're tied to a YEPA. Yep. A two-hour-old YEP. We just got to get them back on TV just saying that over and over and over. We can get the markets back up.

I can't really underscore how totally nuts this whole thing is. What are we doing? $4 trillion in market value moved on that. And it was a two-hour interview. I want to reveal a little bit behind the curtain here for the viewers, because that's what we do on the YouTube channel. We've had an internal discussion about whether to do videos around the stock market while the market's open. And my position is don't do videos around the stock market while the market's open. And my position is don't do videos around the stock market while the stock market is open because things go up, things go down. You don't know. You wait. Then this happened. I was like, I can't. You have to do videos because it just shows how

out of kilter we are in terms of our finances here, where we're moving markets based on a two-hour-old interpretation of a Fox & Friends interview involving Kevin Hassett, of all people. Now, since then, the White House has clarified, right? Yeah. So the White House has said that this is fake news. There is, you know, that certainly this interpretation of Hassett's remarks is wrong. And now the markets are dipping once again. But, you know, I'm staring right now. Rapid response. Forty seven.

The the White House account says in response to a breaking news post about Trump considering the tariff pause. Wrong. Fake news. They're very adamant that they are not considering this. I mean, I can't imagine how much, I mean, this has caused some turmoil in our office as we've been running around doing this. Can you imagine if we had anything to do with money? You know, people who are, you know, on banks who are just saying, we got to make a

big bet on this Walter Bloomberg tweet. And suddenly they're watching all this money evaporate. I mean, this is how fast it's gone. I'm staring up because my Twitter page is up. Benny Johnson, another MAG account. This is 1043. Okay, so this is just a minute ago. This is, you know, 10, 15 minutes after the correction of the fake tweet. But Benny just tweeted, breaking, colon, the S&P 500 gains $4 trillion following EU announcement of interest in zero for zero tariffs with the United States.

He's on the wrong story and 20 minutes behind the news cycle and $4 trillion off. And I don't blame him because this is so nutty. Well, and the irony here, of course, is that last week when the market was plunging, Benny was saying, you don't even need money anymore. You still care about that money stuff? Like, get over it. Why does he care about this? Why is he tweeting about this? As soon as it goes in the green, goes oh we did it why is he tweeting about this penny get off come on now all right so we're so let's try to like get this back into the world of reality here

we have tariffs the white house is saying on the record we're not lifting them got what did trump call it this morning? Panica? Panicans. He said the Panican Party. So this is a combination of Republicans and panic. What do we think? Does this one have staying power? You know things are bad when his nicknames are that bad. He's like, I got to think of something quick. I got to come. Now, the last thing I want to say is Bill Ackman. Yes.

Okay. I don't know how much of an Ackmanologist you are. I'm a big time Ackman head. Yeah. Okay. So what happened last night? Sure. So Bill Ackman, you know, obviously. I just set it up because I think the 90 day pause idea was floated by Bill last night.

So that's why Hassett was asked about it. And for those who don't know, Bill is a big finance guy, a conspiracist of the worst variety. And he loves Trump, but seems to be sour on him. That's the bad guy. Now you take it from here. Yeah. So Bill Ackman is, yes, he became increasingly sort of Trump-pilled last year. But as his holdings, I would imagine, are getting worse and worse as the market collapses, he's getting sort of like, oh, OK, Trump, like, good gambit.

But maybe it's time to, you know, as you said, put a 90-day hold on the tariffs. Right. Like, somehow pull us out of this. And so then he sort of started just shooting wildly on Twitter. Started saying, you know, Howard Letnick, the Commerce Secretary, is deliberately tanking the market because he has some bond investments. And then he said this morning, oh, you know, oh, never mind. Sorry about insulting you, Howard. I mean, so he's panicking live. I mean, he may be the chairman of the panicking party. But he was the one who wants the pause. And now he almost got the pause by a fake social media post from Walter Bloomberg.

I feel a little bit bad for Bill. You almost got what you wanted. Looks like you didn't. As we finish up this video, the Dow is down after shooting up and getting our hopes up. Now down again after the White House says no pause. Doesn't mean it can't go back up. We don't know what's coming on social media. We live in reality where these posts can move markets in ways that are, uh, unreal, frankly. Uh, well, thank you for unpacking this.

Um, appreciate you jumping on. Um, you have a future as a stock advisor. Thanks for having me. Okay. Take care. Subscribe to the feed. Talk to you later.