They look like idiots now. But he likely conned them.
If you think YOU or I are not susceptible to being fooled and made to look like idiots, then you live in a bunker or have no money or no money interactions except in the most safest and low returning investments or savings.
Give the victims he defrauded a break. He lied to them, they trusted him. But now they will never know unless they can show explicitly that he was using them to buy what he was shorting.
And recognize too that he knew exactly where they were financially. He knew where they would experience a margin call and where he could cause them to be liquidated. He betrayed their trust.
But these statements in the press may be used against him if his investors can band together to file suit. He was stupid to make these statements. Crooks are often stupid, letting their criminal egos carry them along an allusion of invincibility.
If so, then they really were idiots. It seems to me that one of the biggest issues with the whole mess we're in now, is that the folks whose transactions caused it, probably didn't actually understood the financial instruments they were using; nor did they understand the consequences of what would happen when something didn't go according to plan.
I'd say that "idiot" is a rather kind way to characterize folks whose lack of understanding has resulted in the market problems we've seen over the past year.