Billionaire CEO Rips CNBC for Hyping Infamous ‘Hell is Coming’ Rant: You ‘Ran Around Scaring People’ Because it Was Good TV

A billionaire hedge fund titan who went viral for a rant in which he infamously predicted “hell is coming” to Wall Street is blasting CNBC for hyping his diatribe out of context.

Appearing on CNBC Wednesday morning, Bill Ackman — CEO of the hedge fund management company Pershing Square — argued that he was actually delivering a bullish message during his March 18 interview.

“Hell is coming,” Ackman said on March 18, as his voice was breaking. “This is a feeling like I’ve never had. Like there’s a tsunami coming.”

“That was a 28 minute segment,” Ackman said Wednesday. “And [the ‘hell is coming’ soundbite] was about a 15 second piece of it.”

Ackman claimed Wednesday that he was merely advocating for the country to shut down. At the time, no state had yet implemented a lockdown. Overall, though, he indicated that he was buying stocks including Hilton, and believed that the country would eventually lock down.

He went on to bash CNBC for sensationalizing his remarks.

“I really blame CNBC,” Ackman said. “They took 15 seconds of my interview and they ran around scaring people because it was good television. And I hate to be in your face for this, but exactly that’s what happened. I gave a very bullish message. I said I was buying stocks which I literally was doing on the same day. I tweeted the same thing. And then you guys kept playing the ‘hell is coming’ piece.”

Still, a review of the whole rant reveals Ackman sounding panicked for far more than 15 seconds. He argued at one point “America will end as we know it,” without a shutdown. And he also spoke about hoarding cash.

“My colleagues thought I was a lunatic,” he said. “I did stuff I’ve never done before. I’ve never had more than $200 in my wallet. I went to the bank, and I took out a large amount of money in cash. I made preparations a month ago.”

The segment was widely blamed with triggering a market freefall so stark that trading was actually halted shortly afterwards. (The S&P 500 went down 7 percent in the minutes after the interview.) And Ackman’s comments were widely denounced by critics including MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle — who called Ackman’s rant “wildly irresponsible.”

Ackman, according to CNBC, made $2 billion in the week after his viral rant by selling his bets against the market.

Watch above, via CNBC.