I think he was being provocative and maybe a bit tongue-in-cheek when he said that. A candidate object alone doesn't resolve the Hodge Conjecture. Any apparent counterexample would have to prove that no algebraic cycle exists, no invariant subspace exists, or that every element of an infinite ideal is nilpotent. Much harder, but not impossible.
Indeed I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek -- but if you ask geometers whether they believe the Hodge conjecture then you certainly don't always get an unqualified "yes"! This is in contrast to e.g. asking number theorists whether they believe Birch--Swinnerton-Dyer, where they are almost always very confident.
