Journalist Taylor Lorenz has provoked anger after describing
Luigi Mangione as “handsome,” “smart,” and “morally good” in a discussion about his online fandom.
Mangione, 26, was arrested in December for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, 50, outside of the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan, before fleeing the scene and sparking a week-long manhunt.
U.S. Attorney General
Pam Bondi has said the
Justice Department will
seek the death penalty for what she characterized as “an act of political violence.”
However, Mangione’s actions have been celebrated as vigilante heroism in some corners of the internet, with many expressing sympathy with his anger over the cost of health insurance provided by firms like Thompson’s.
Speaking to
CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan for Sunday’s installment of his show
MisinfoNation, Lorenz ridiculed the media outrage over Mangione’s celebrity.
“To see these millionaire media pundits on TV clutching their pearls about someone stanning a murderer when this is the United States of America, as if we don’t lionize criminals, as if we don’t have, you know, we don’t stan murderers of all sorts, and we can give them Netflix shows,” she said.
“There’s a huge disconnect between the narratives and the angles that mainstream media pushes and what the American public feels.”
Asked by O’Sullivan about the gatherings of female supporters who have congregated outside of the defendant’s court hearings in New York so far, the former
Washington Post and
New York Times journalist laughed.
“You’re going to see women especially that feel like, Oh my God, right? Like, here’s this man who’s revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who is young, who’s smart,” she said.
“He’s a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find.”