President-elect Trump weighed in on the assassination-style murder of a health insurance executive Monday, calling viral support for the murder that has appeared online a “sickness.”
The incoming president, who has deep roots in New York City, called the ambush shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson “cold-blooded and “horrible” during a news briefing Monday, a week after police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, arrested 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus Luigi Mangione.
“I think it’s really terrible that some people seem to admire him – like him,” Trump said. “It was cold-blooded, just a cold-blooded, horrible killing.”
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Mangione, a computer programmer with an Ivy League background who hails from a wealthy Maryland family, allegedly stalked Thompson to a Manhattan hotel and shot him in the back with a suppressed, 3D-printed handgun.
Days before police had identified him as the suspect, they shared a surveillance photo taken at the New York City hostel where Mangione allegedly stayed before the murder. It showed a grinning man, reportedly flirting with the young woman working the counter as he checked in.
The image circulated widely online – as an interstate effort to identify him was underway and also as critics of the health insurance industry praised the crime.
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“How people can like this guy, that’s a sickness actually,” Trump said Monday.
He was particularly appalled by how the murder was carried out – gunshots from behind.
Surveillance video taken outside a Manhattan Hilton hotel where UnitedHealthcare was about to host shareholders and other investors for an annual conference shows Thompson walking up about an hour and 15 minutes before the event started.
A masked man stepped out behind him, fired into his back and walked away, as a horrified woman who witnessed the murder fled in the other direction.
“Maybe it’s fake news. I don’t know; it’s hard to believe that that can even be thought of, but, it seems that there’s a certain appetite for him,” Trump said. “I don’t get it.”
Despite the violence, many commentators online praised the unmasked suspect’s appearance and the attack on the health insurance industry.
Online fundraising sites shut down efforts to raise money for his legal defense. His image appeared on viral memes. Radical commenters praised the slaying and condemned the witnesses who spotted him at an Altoona, Pennsylvania, McDonald’s and called 911.
The restaurant, its workers and local police have all received a wave of death threats as a result, and other large health care companies have taken portraits and biographical information of their corporate leaders down from their websites.
Mangione is facing a slew of charges in New York and Pennsylvania, including second-degree murder, unlawful possession of a firearm and carrying a fake ID.
His lawyer told a Pennsylvania judge last week he planned to fight extradition to New York.
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