There's a conspiracy theory going around: Did a firm linked to George Soros, BlackRock, and the Bush family short the stock for the Trump Media & Technology Group on the day before the attempted Trump assassination? So, is there any truth to this? Former investment banker Carol Roth joins Glenn to explain why there's more to this story. Plus, she gives her take on the CrowdStrike outage, whether Trump would make JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon or BlackRock CEO Larry Fink his Treasury Secretary, and why a President Kamala Harris might be disastrous for the economy.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: So let me go to Carol Roth now, who is joining us. She is the author of, you will own nothing, and a former investment banker. I want to talk to her a little bit about Kamala Harris.
But also, about this so-called short, taking a short position, against Donald J. Trump. A day before the assassination attempt of 7/13. She's been looking into it for us. Carol, welcome.
CAROL: Hi, Glenn, have you aged 12 years in the last 10 days like I have?
GLENN: Yes, I have. Yes, I have. Yes, I have.
And I think we're going to age another 40 years by the end of the summer.
CAROL: Yeah, I think you're right, unfortunately.
GLENN: Okay. So tell me. Tell me. Is this true or not?
The Trump media option story?
CAROL: So this is one of the biggest stories going on over social media. And certainly was very odd, right? The day before he gets assassinated, there's this big set of options, contracts, betting against the stock, saying that the stock. They were betting that the stock was going to fall massively. Millions and millions of contracts. And, of course, everybody tying, what does this mean? What does this mean?
So this is what I found based on publicly available information. So registered investment adviser, called Austin Private Wealth, as you mentioned, they have to file what's called a 13F filing. This is a disclosure filing, that's required quarterly from any investment manager that has more than $100 million in assets, under management. And basically, it lists all of their equity holdings, which usually includes equity-related options and -- ETFs and stocks and the like, at the end of every quarter. And since after the quarter ends, it takes a little bit of time to gather the data, you know, that usually is filed within a few weeks after the end of the quarter.
So the filing for Austin wealth, as of the end of June, was made on July 12th.
So people who sort of, you know -- think that this was reflective of something that happened on July 12th, didn't really appreciate that this was the end of June report, that was filed on July 12th.
That sort of set off the first wave of conspiracies.
GLENN: Okay.
CAROL: The second thing, really unfortunately, is that they had a third party vendor, apparently, according to their press release. That erroneously misstated their positions. And that meant for the Trump -- the Trump media group, that they had put -- instead of putting 12 contracts, which represented 1200 shares. Each contract is 100 share. It shows that they had 12 million shares, Glenn.
So that sounds a little sketchy why they would do that, but they did that on every call and put option that they had listed.
So it was -- for Nvidia, they had 370 million shares listed. Bank of America, 110 million shares. So this was a clear error across-the-board.
And because I don't believe anything, I went back and I checked all of the previous filings.
And in all of the previous filings, they had a -- a normalized number of contracts, being shown.
So it was clear this was a mistake, and it was an outlier.
So when you put these two things together, and you look -- it looks like there's so many shares, and it's done in a time period, that looks like it was the -- you know, Friday before the assassination attempt. But really, that was just the filing date. It got very blown out of proposition.
And they recognized their error, and they did a new filing, that they had to amend with the FEC. And this is on July 15th. And for anybody who is super nerdy and likes to go through and look at filings.
This is all available on the FEC site, Edgar, which allows you to find all the filings of the publicly -- publicly available filings that are made by companies. It's an unfortunate mistake in terms of timing and sort of the scope of the mistake that was made.
GLENN: Okay.
Let me take the next one. And that is CrowdStrike.
CAROL: Yes.
GLENN: There was a major outage this weekend.
And they say, it was just a release of new software.
And it was just an error that nobody caught. How does that happen
And put the United States. I mean, there were like 12 planes flying in the sky, because of this. And Europe was hit even harder than we were.
CAROL: Yeah. This was -- I have talked about the scene before. In previous books and things like that.
And he's the author and sort of coiner of the phrase, the back swan in wider use.
GLENN: Right.
CAROL: And they talk about these systemic risks that were being brought on by the fact that we're also interconnected. And technology is really exacerbating the systemic risk.
In fact, it's one of the reasons I argued in, you will own nothing, that a central bank digital currency, on top of all of the other reasons, made no sense.
Because it increases, you know, that -- the idea that you could have this massive one-off systemic risk, instead of everything being decentralized and having maybe more frequent, but smaller risks.
So when you have a firm that is tied into basically every major company in the planet. And it's impacting how their infrastructure runs, you're increasing the -- the ability to have these huge systemic risks.
Now, how can -- is it intentional?
Is it a test run?
Is it just incompetence?
Unfortunately, I tend to think we're in the era of incompetence. And that is in many ways, just as bad.
And we've seen in all these different areas of our life, these sort of lackadaisical policies. And the fact that people are no longer in school, taught, you know, merit and excellence. And the value of their name and their work.
And they just want to be given things based on an equity. And because I showed up. You know, you do get these worse outcomes, and so, you know, how could it happen. I mean, we all sit there. Yeah. What you test for these things. But, you know, that's sort of the reality we're living in.
And I think it really should highlight and put a giant red neon sign on the fact that we shouldn't all be beyond these same systems.
There should be some level of decentralization. There should be at least a secondary fail-safe, because, you know, this is something that was massive, and was able to be brought back up. In short order.
But the next thing that may not be the case.
And this is the kind of stuff, you and I have been talking about in terms of repetition.
Because what if you didn't have ATM access for multiple days.
What if, you know, you didn't have access to a pharmacy, that couldn't get you, your medication on time. Because, you know, they couldn't access their records.
I mean, there's so many things now that are all completely reliant on technology.
Which is great, when it works, 99 percent of the time.
And when it doesn't work, it can be a disaster.
GLENN: So quickly, I just want to touch on Jamie Dimon being thrown around. What a surprise that is. When I saw him at Davos. And he said, you know, we should take a second look at Donald Trump. I don't think he's that bad of a guy, but he wants to be Treasury Secretary. But I also saw a story that Donald Trump is friends with Larry Fink from BlackRock and would consider that.
I don't believe that. What have you heard?
CAROL: Yeah. I saw that headline well, and I almost fell over.
You know, in the Jamie Dimon versus Larry Fink. I'm taking Jamie Dimon, every single day. 24/7, 365, every single time. Jamie, himself, has been positioning to get out of JP Morgan for the first time ever. He says that he's no longer a -- yeah. I will be here for the next five years. I'm looking for a successor.
What are the things that you may or may not be aware of. And this happened with Gary Cohn in the last administration. Is that if you go into it, in an administration, they make you share all of your shares. Which means, you don't have to at that point, have to pay capital gains taxes on them. So it's a really great way, if you have a lot of stocks to get a windfall.
And given the fact that Jamie Dimon is plugged in with all these people and knows what's going on, I think that's one to watch for Larry Fink. I think we all need to raise our voices, if that sounds like it's something that will happen.
Which is why I would tell you, that four people who say, should I get out of the stock market?
You have to remember, these guys are always taking care of their own. If we're talking about Jamie Dimon, in charge of things, what do you think our number one priority is going to be?
Wall Street.
GLENN: Right. So let me switch now to Kamala Harris.
Just based on the insane things she was for, when she was a senator and running, what -- what happens to the economy, under Kamala Harris?
CAROL: Yeah, this is very scary. I mean, we know that Kamala doesn't have a lot of economic stuff. We know that she likes Venn diagrams, but that's about it.
GLENN: Yes. And yellow school buses.
CAROL: Yes. And yellow school buses. So that's sort of the extent of her economic knowledge. And what's scary about that is it makes her more susceptible to the bad actors. We already know that Biden was not the one who was running the last administration. I mean, that's super clear to everyone. He was positioned as a moderate, and he was the most destructive president economically and otherwise that we have seen in a lifetime.
So now you have the same people, who were pulling the puppet strings, and now they have Kamala Harris. Who has -- and I know that Justin Haskins, your coauthor has brought this up before -- you know, she has a very checkered history. She was -- I think a lot of people forget this. She was one of the Senate sponsors. Cosponsors of the original green new deal. So she had --
GLENN: Which was insane.
CAROL: Yeah. I don't think people remember, because the Biden's version is insane too.
But this was like, you know, 100 trillion-dollar insane, and that was their estimate. So this is somebody who is in the same league as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, when they're talking about policy.
We have her on video, saying things like, I don't think there should be any private health care.
And if you go back to being -- you know, somebody who wanted to step into that cosponsorship, most of the senators did not want anything to do with that. There were a handful that did. She stepped forward.
If you start going through that, it's a socialization of everything. It's not only just completely killing energy policy. But it's a socialization of labor and wages. And, you know, even more so of college, and, you know, all of these different government handouts. And, you know, basic income programs. So I think that people really need to be doubled down on, A, this is not only an extension of the Biden administration, terrible policies. Because the same people are pulling the strings. But she's also aligned with every kooky socialist on the planet.
And this is a person with a lot of political clout, afforded to, that, no. You know what, I came from this area. I ran a business.
You know, I'm strong in this, and I know.
GLENN: Right.
CAROL: I mean, do you think she has any idea of what monetary policy is? I can't think that she does. And that makes her extra, extra dangerous.
GLENN: Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Carol. Thank you for all the homework you've done over the weekend, to prepare for this segment.
I appreciate it. Carol Roth. You can follow her at CarolRoth.com/news.