In a conversation on CNN, journalist Taylor Lorenz described the man accused of gunning down a UnitedHealthcare executive as handsome and smart, and said many women perceive Luigi Mangione as “this morally good man, which is hard to find.”
In the segment with CNN senior correspondent Donie O’Sullivan, Lorenz also said that admiration of Mangione is an example of Americans lionizing criminals, and she and O’Sullivan went on to compare people who have sympathy for Mangione with people who voted for President Donald Trump.
“It’s because a lot of people are just really, really desperate,” O’Sullivan said. Lorenz agreed and replied, “They want somebody to take on the system. They want somebody to tear down these barbaric establishment institutions.”
The remarks were met with outrage on social media, and Lorenz later seemed to try to soften them. She told Fox Digital that she finds it “really concerning” that people are celebrating violence and becoming “casually comfortable” with violent rhetoric.
“This Luigi movement is sort of indicative of some of that cynicism where you’re seeing people that are just really angry and upset with the system,” Lorenz told Lindsay Kornick of Fox Digital.
Since his arrest in Pennsylvania, Mangione has become something of a cult figure, with people contributing to his defense fund and standing outside courtrooms to show their support. There is an online store that sells merchandise featuring Mangione’s image, including a locket in the shape of a heart.
Lorenz, who previously worked for The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other media companies, said on CNN that her own audience had grown because she has voiced the anger that people in the “Free Luigi” movement feel toward healthcare companies and their executives.
Lorenz has said in the past that she felt “joy” when hearing about the murder, although when Piers Morgan pushed back, she amended that to “maybe not joy, but certainly not empathy” and said that “greedy health executives, like this one, push policies of denying care to the most vulnerable people.”
The outrage about the light-hearted conversation between O’Sullivan and Lorenz also extended to CNN, for airing the segment.
Lorenz alienated many conservatives on social media when in 2022 she wrote about Chaya Raichik, the previously-anonymous person behind the popular social media account “Libs of TikTok.”
Per Semafor, Vox Media announced in December that it was terminating its arrangement with Lorenz to distribute her podcast and YouTube show.
The CNN conversation comes on the heels of a report that says nearly a third of Americans said that the killing of some public figures can be justified.
As City Journal reported, “The figures are startling: 38 percent of respondents, and 55 percent of those left of center, said assassinating President Trump would be at least somewhat justified; 31 percent of respondents, and 48 percent of those left of center, said the same about Musk.”