Something funny happened this week.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) defended the celebration of cold-blooded murder, and hardly anyone in the press blinked an eye.
Here’s why: Like Warren and Ocasio-Cortez, many journalists, commentators and editors hold extreme political views, including that some political violence can be rationalized and even defended.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot last week on the streets of New York City. The accused shooter, Luigi Mangione, was arrested a few days later at a McDonalds in Pennsylvania.
Thompson, who is survived by his wife and two sons, was the son of a beautician and a grain elevator operator. Mangione is a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate whose parents own a country club. In 2016, Mangione graduated from a $40,000 per year preparatory school.
The left-wing reaction to Thompson’s murder has been a typical blend of joyful cruelty and dorm-room eat-the-rich revolutionary nonsense. That is not particularly noteworthy. What is noteworthy, however, is that the glee over Thompson’s execution has been characterized as the righteous cry of an oppressed people, rather than the deranged joy of bloodthirsty wannabe Jacobins.
“The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the health care system,” Warren told HuffPo. “Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far,” the senator added. “This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”
We know little about Mangione’s motivations or personal and medical circumstances. The notion that he allegedly murdered Thompson over personal health care-related hardships is still only speculative.
Later, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, Ocasio-Cortez echoed sentiments similar to Warren’s. “This is not to say that an act of violence is justified,” the congresswoman said, “but I think for anyone who is confused or shocked or appalled [by the celebratory response], they need to understand that people interpret and feel and experience denied claims as an act of violence against them.”
If I were a high-profile member of an institution that is loathed even more than Wall Street, Big Pharma or the news media, I would avoid pairing assassinations with sympathetic rationalizations.
The implicit endorsement of murdering societal “parasites” in the name of “justice” won’t appear so righteous and reasonable when the neo-Robespierres realize that lawmakers and professors earn six-figure salaries on the backs of students and taxpayers, all while producing practically no tangible, real-world benefit.
And if I were a lawmaker advocating for nationalized health care, I would also not justify the murder of health care administrators. What do you think will happen when people suffer under national health care, and there’s an existing permission structure that suggests it’s acceptable to shoot health care officials if you are denied care?
But I digress.
As a quick exercise, let’s imagine that Mangione had murdered an abortion doctor, provoking days of celebration on right-wing social media. What would the reaction from polite society be if, for instance, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) were to rationalize this celebration as a natural response from people who sincerely believe that abortion is murder?
How do you think the press would react? It would be shock and disgusted, and rightly so. But there is no widespread shock in the media over the remarks made by Ocasio-Cortez and Warren. We see no great outcry over their rationalizations. This is because deranged left-wingers enjoy representation in the news media, unlike deranged right-wingers.
See if you can spot the difference between what Warren said and how, say, CBS has covered the assassination.
“The 50-year-old husband and father of two sons was buried on Monday. But online voices see him only as the face of a half-trillion-dollar health conglomerate. In their eyes, the obstacle to affordable health care,” reporter Mark Strassman said during an evening news package this week. “To many of these critics, it’s a business model built on refusing to pay for services. In 2023, UnitedHealthcare denied roughly 33% of all claims, the highest rate in the industry. The overall industry rate, 19%.”
The CBS crew then interviewed a “health care ethicist” who said UnitedHealthcare denied her hysterectomy claim.
“Were you sad for [Thompson’s] family?” asked the CBS journalist.
“Yes,” responded Wilson.
“But you were also sad for all the people his company had denied?” asked CBS.
Answered Wilson, “Yes.”
UnitedHealthcare did eventually approve Wilson’s claim. This raises the obvious question: What was the purpose of this CBS segment, if not to lend a sympathetic ear to the assassin’s suspected motivations?
Elsewhere at CBS, the morning crew played a clip from a TikTok user who, in reaction to Thompson’s murder, said “Americans have just had it. We have had it with being shafted by corporate America.”
To this, CBS anchor Gayle King responded, “She speaks for a lot of people there, but this really isn’t about this tragedy.” Later, King asked of CBS News medical contributor Celine Gounder, “Do you think this could lead to changes in the insurance industry? … But do you think in some — I hate to say it that something good could come out of this tragedy, that insurance companies will say, ‘Hey, we can and we need to do better?”
Do you recall that period when it seemed like everyone was concerned about “stochastic terrorism” born of political rhetoric? Are we not doing that anymore?
At MSNBC, anchor Joy Reid remarked, “Let’s just be clear, there’s a real hatred for these companies that is on social media right now and also in real life, too. At the time he was killed, the victim, Brian Thompson was CEO of the largest private insurer in the U.S.”
“As CEO he was embroiled with a lawsuit of consolidation, United has gobbled up dozens of insurance companies over the decades to become not only the larger insurer in the U.S., but by profits the largest in the world, and they exist in an industry that is all about consolidation and profit where basically four to five companies control everything and care little about health care consumers in the minds of many Americans,” she added.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that the celebration of Thompson’s murder merely offers “a glimpse into an unusual American moment.”
In the entertainment world, it has been no better.
At ABC, for example, alleged funnyman Jimmy Kimmel reveled in receiving texts from friends and staffers who expressed that they were “obsessed” with this “handsome CEO killer.” To uproarious laughter, Kimmel read aloud humorous texts that included, “We all love him,” “I’m not mad at him,” “I need him so bad, no, like so bad, so, so bad,” and “I’m about to be a jailhouse bride.”
Thompson’s two sons buried their father on Dec. 9.
Becket Adams is program director of the National Journalism Center.
