Ex-Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz has continued through a viral TV appearance and on social media this week to appear supportive of the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
In a post uploaded to her Instagram page Tuesday morning, Lorenz shared a TikTok clip romanticizing the shooting, along with the location where it occurred.
The clip, originally posted by TikTok user @lolaith, depicted the “UnitedHealthcare CEO a$$asination tour,” with the user strolling past the Midtown Hilton Hotel in Manhattan where Thompson was gunned down, and adding the caption, “Where the magic happened.”
UNITEDHEALTHCARE CEO BRIAN THOMPSON’S KILLER USED FAKE ID TO CHECK INTO NYC HOSTEL BEFORE SLAYING: SOURCES
Journalist Taylor Lorenz has raised eyebrows with her reaction to the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. (Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for TheRetaility.com)
The satirical video included shots of the café where one of the shooting witnesses “got her coffee,” a shot of the “cameras that captured it all!” – namely, the video of Thompson’s murder – and a video of nearby Central Park, which the user captioned, “Fleeing through Central Park.”
The clip appeared to be one of many trending posts that were making light of Thompson’s murder.
In addition to sharing the TikTok, Lorenz shared a variety of other ironic social media posts about the shooting – some which referred to the attractiveness and influencer appeal of murder suspect Luigi Mangione.
Police arrested Mangione in Pennsylvania on Monday and charged him in connection with Thompson’s killing. Four fake IDs, a gun and silencer resembling those used in the shooting, and a manifesto, denouncing the health insurance industry, were found on his person.
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Suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione’s photo appears during a CNN segment.
Lorenz also wrote about Thompson’s killer becoming a “national hero” in a Substack article she published Monday.
Throughout the piece, the journalist noted how the killer has “become a star,” and how people are “getting tattoos of the man’s face, making fancams, and the memes are flowing.”
She also shared, “Every person I spoke to said they’ve completely lost faith in the two party system and the media, which they feel is beholden to corporate interests. They’re rallying around the shooter because he seems like the only man right now willing to do something about it.”
Journalist Piers Morgan called out Lorenz’s apparent sympathy for the shooter during an episode of “Piers Morgan Uncensored” that aired Monday evening. During the program, Lorenz admitted she felt “joy” over Thompson’s death.
When a shocked Morgan confronted her on it, saying Thompson is a “husband and father,” Lorenz replied, “So are the tens of thousands of Americans that he murdered! So are the tens of thousands of Americans, innocent Americans, who died because greedy health insurance executives like this one push a policy of denying care to the most vulnerable people.”
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UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in midtown Manhattan last week. (Photo Credit: Businesswire | NYPD Crimestoppers)
She continued, “And I am a part of the many millions of Americans that have watched people that I care about suffer, and in some cases die, because of lack of healthcare.”
During the segment, Lorenz clarified that she doesn’t believe that every healthcare executive should be murdered. Later, she emphasized that she took back what she said about feeling joy over the murder, and said it was the wrong word.
Morgan’s question came in light of Lorenz’s reaction to the news of the CEO’s killing last week, when she shared news that another healthcare company was denying covering anesthesia for the full length of some surgeries.
“And people wonder why we want these executives dead,” she captioned the post on Bluesky.
In another post from that week, the journalist appeared to defend the sentiment of those who wanted people like Thompson dead. She wrote, “People have very justified hatred toward insurance company CEOs because these executives are responsible for an unfathomable amount of death and suffering. As someone against death and suffering, I think it’s good to call out this broken system and the ppl in power who enable it.”
Fox News Digital’s Christina Coulter and Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
