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Charlie Kirk is the Founder and President of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing conservative youth activist organization in the country with over 250,000 student members, over 150 full-time staff, and a presence on over 2,000 high school and college campuses nationwide. Charlie is also the Chairman of Students for Trump, which aims to activate one million new college voters on campuses in battleground states in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. His social media reaches over 100 million people per month and according to Axios, he is one of the "top 10 most engaged" Twitter handles in the world. He is also the host of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which regularly ranks among the top news shows on Apple podcast charts.
Charlie Kirk Breaks Down the Luigi Mangione Case and America's Disturbing Reaction to CEO Murder
Charlie Kirk examines the arrest of Luigi Mangione in the United Healthcare CEO shooting and addresses the troubling public response. Mangione, a University of Pennsylvania graduate from a well-off family, allegedly murdered Brian Thompson, a CEO who rose from humble beginnings as the son of a farm worker. Kirk explores the suspect's background, his apparent descent into psychedelic drug use, connections to the Unabomber manifesto, and the darker cultural forces at play when thousands celebrate vigilante justice against a father of two.
The suspected United Healthcare CEO shooter has been apprehended after a week-long manhunt. This is one of the weirdest stories we've seen in quite some time and one of the saddest. The suspected shooter, Luigi Mangione, was spotted at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Police arrived and found he was using the same fake ID that was used by the shooter. They also found a silenced pistol with him, which they described as a ghost gun—a gun assembled from parts purchased online.
Mangione had a short 262-word note similar to a brief manifesto, reminiscent of the Unabomber manifesto, which attacked companies that "continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it."
The Ironic Class Reversal
The fact pattern of this story is really remarkable. Mangione, the supposed downtrodden hero of the working class, is from a very well-off family in Maryland and attended an Ivy League school—the University of Pennsylvania. Brian Thompson, the man he murdered in cold blood, was the son of a farm worker and went to Iowa State.
What Went Wrong: From Promise to Violence
Why did he do it? Why did he kill this CEO in cold blood? We're sure to learn a lot more, but from scouring Mangione's social media profile, we've learned a lot. Mangione appears to have been a person of immense promise. He was a high school valedictorian and had an Ivy League degree in computer science. As a young man, he doesn't seem to have been that far left of a radical. In fact, he seems to have been politically centrist.
But then something went terribly wrong. Mangione was supposed to participate in a friend's wedding this fall when he suddenly vanished and stopped speaking even to his family and friends. According to his friends, Mangione had a dramatic personality change after undergoing back surgery. He also posted about experimenting with psychedelic drugs—really a bad idea.
The Psychedelic Connection
This whole new rise of ketamine and LSD-laced psychedelics is a bad trend in our country. I do not support it. All of a sudden, the street drugs of the 1960s are considered to be legitimate prescriptions and alternatives. It's a bad idea. One possibility is that he underwent surgery and used psychedelic drugs to try and manage the pain and instead had a psychotic break that ended in murder.
The Unabomber Connection
Internet users have also read through his Goodreads page, which lists hundreds of books that he's read over the years. One of those, by the way, was Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance, but the more interesting one was the one by Ted Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber manifesto.
Interestingly, if it's true that Mangione was poisoning himself with psychedelics, he had a lot in common with Ted Kaczynski. Ted Kaczynski was also a victim of poisoning, of course by the Central Intelligence Agency. The Unabomber's manifesto is famous on the American right because it spends quite a bit of time attacking modern liberals. It accuses them of hating the West—remember, Kaczynski was also a genius—and justifying all kinds of evils as a result. We've certainly seen that to be true.
But the manifesto also attacks modern big business and industrial society in general, accusing it of breaking down human relationships, alienating us from one another, and wrecking the environment and so on. Ultimately, the Unabomber believed that tearing down all of modern society was needed to save humanity. It's a radical work and one that, if taken seriously, could lead a person to commit terrorism. In this case, at least it seemed to have actually happened.
The Disturbing Public Reaction
The deeper we dive into this, the more dark we see the picture of Mangione. What would lead him to do something like this? Well, it could be an insurance claim. It could be this belief that the insurance industry is inherently awful or evil. However, allow me to mention something that I've seen from the outside, which I am simply a reporter on, and I find it to be very disturbing.
The widespread internet reaction of the lack of remorse for the death of this CEO is very noteworthy. This CEO, Brian Thompson, did not deserve to be murdered in the street at all. Not everyone necessarily agrees with that. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people that are celebrating the death of Brian Thompson—the death penalty with no pre-trial, due process, now vigilante justice. In this way, it is completely wrong.
However, let's just take a step back and say: what is it that would drive the American people to believe that Brian Thompson—not the American people, but some people, enough where it's noteworthy, okay, not some fringe on the internet—to believe that a CEO and a father of two who's doing his job deserves to be murdered? And it is a deeper and darker picture into how broken health insurance is in this country.
Mental Health and Cultural Breakdown
In some ways, of course, this is a mental health issue. This guy's obviously been all psychedelicked up. Very high IQ and with an altered brain could be very, very evil. But I'm just struck by how many people aren't upset and not sad that this CEO was murdered because they say that, well, my claim was not filled, my claim was not taken. And that's another very difficult takeaway from this entire saga.
People are even review bombing the McDonald's where Mangione was arrested, saying that it was full of rats. So what does this mean for our culture, our society? It will go down as one of the most perplexing stories in 2024.
The Attack and Its Implications
The CEO goes to a shareholder meeting and Mangione, who obviously did his research, assumed he was going to be there, and we still don't yet know how he knew he was going to be there at that very specific time. Mangione is likely going to spend the rest of his life in prison.
The CEO of United Healthcare had death threats—I get death threats all the time—but didn't have personal security with him, and that's too bad. But for millions of people to react—and of course, Mangione is innocent until proven guilty, he's a suspect not convicted, all those proper prerequisites and important things to note, caveats—if even a small portion of the population is thrilled that a CEO or celebrating, saying the CEO deserved it, what does that mean? There's something else deeper going on here.
Final Thoughts: A Tragedy and a Warning
Let me be perfectly clear: the CEO did not deserve it. This guy should go to jail for the rest of his life. I'm simply observing the reaction as a curious onlooker, saying what is this? This is strange. I mean, I think it's terrible. I think it's a tragedy that a father of two and a guy in a replaceable CEO role just gets murdered in cold blood. I think it's awful.
But we need to think about this and ask ourselves the question less about the Mangione, because I think we have a picture about that—it's psychedelics, it's the Ivy League crowd. That stuff will drive you nuts. It's not good. And there's a deeper thing at play here worth some examination.
I believe in the Book of Romans or Philippians there is a prohibition on the Greek word called pharmakeia, which is exactly what this guy used, and I believe it is a gateway to the demonic and the underworld. Do not play around with that stuff, everybody. It is bad across the board.
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