In another meandering news conference Monday, President-elect Donald Trump condemned fans of Luigi Mangione, who police allege shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City sidewalk weeks ago. (Mangione’s lawyer has said he will plead not guilty to all charges.)
Mangione has been celebrated by some as a folk hero. And that celebrity has clearly gotten under Trump’s skin.
During his news conference, Trump said:
I think it’s really terrible that some people seem to admire him, like him. And I was happy to see that it wasn’t specific to this gentleman that was killed. It’s just an overall sickness, as opposed to a specific sickness. That was a terrible thing. It was cold-blooded. Just a cold-blooded, horrible killing. And how people can like this guy is — that’s a sickness, actually.
Donald Trump says people who admire suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione have a "sickness."
— The Recount (@therecount) December 16, 2024
"The way it was done, it was so bad. Right in the back. … A thing like that, you just, you can't believe that some people — and maybe it's fake news." pic.twitter.com/nmvZvbZClb
I agree with the premise here: Celebrating vigilante violence is sick. That was the argument in this ReidOut Blog I wrote, denouncing the hero worship of Mangione and Daniel Penny, the New York man who was recently acquitted of criminally negligent homicide after a subway passenger died when Penny placed him in a choke hold.








