Hot on the heels of convicted felon Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election there came another earth-shaking story. On December 4, an assassin named Luigi Mangione allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunning him down outside a hotel in New York. The bullet casings were marked with the words “delay”, “deny”, and “depose,” which seemed a pretty clear condemnation of the healthcare industry. The assassination fascinated the internet and sparked a major discussion about the intrinsically greedy nature of the American healthcare business.
The overwhelming feeling was sympathy for the alleged shooter. A huge, huge amount of people have grievances against healthcare companies and they celebrated the idea of a little guy fighting back. It also didn’t hurt that said little guy was extremely good-looking. From the moment the first pictures of Mangione were released onto the internet as part of a nationwide manhunt, everyone was swooning. They weren’t horrified by his actions, they were hoping he got away with the crime. However, this wasn’t to be. Mangione was picked up at a McDonalds in Altoona, having been turned in by a member of the public who recognized him. (The McDonalds was later flooded with bad reviews.)
By this point Mangione was a bona fide folk hero with an ever-increasing fandom. Some people wrung their hands over the shooter being so celebrated, but that didn’t stop anyone from expressing their admiration. Donald Trump remained blissfully silent through all of this, but now he’s spoken out. His thoughts on the matter were stated in the most rambling and incoherent way possible, because this is Donald Trump after all, but his message is clear: He doesn’t like that people have made a hero out of Mangione.
Trump made his statements at a Mar-a-Lago press conference and immediately spoke over the interviewer. In fact, he muttered a “I think it’s terrible,” before the question had even finished, so no points for politeness there. He continued to state that it was terrible—a competent orator Trump is not— before saying, “Some people seem to admire him, like him.” Then he made a confused ramble about how he was “happy to see it wasn’t specific to this gentleman that was killed, it’s just an overall sickness as opposed to a specific sickness.”
He went on to call the shooting, “cold-blooded” and “horrible” before saying, “How people can like this guy [Mangione] that’s a sickness, actually, that’s really very bad.” He then condemned Mangione for specifically shooting Thompson in the back—who knew Donald Trump abides by such rules of honor?— and then stated his disbelief in the Mangione fandom by calling it “maybe fake news, I don’t know.” Except it is clearly not fake news that many people like and admire Mangione for what he did.
Just as the initial assassination sparked mirth on X (despite, or maybe because of, X being owned by an arguably even worse person than Mangione’s victim) so did Donald Trump’s comments. Many people were quick to point out Trump’s own crimes.
And others mocked the fact that Mangione now has a considerably larger fanbase than Trump himself. Even some conservatives on social media have expressed sympathy for Mangione, citing their own troubles with finding healthcare. It’s a problem that goes across party divides.
You may remember that Donald Trump once famously said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” He has absolutely no leg to stand on when it comes to the love for Luigi Mangione.
Published: Dec 17, 2024 12:08 pm