In response to the news on Monday that police in Pennsylvania apprehended 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, the prime suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is using him as an example of “leftist” views being a mental illness.
In a post to X made shortly after Mangione was identified, Cruz shared an article by the New York Post and wrote, “Leftism is a mental disease. The suspected murderer, an Ivy League graduate, ‘subscribed to anti-capitalist and climate-change causes, according to law enforcement.’ And the murderer has been widely celebrated by leftists online. Tragic & sick.”
In the wake of Mangione’s arrest in Altoona, Pa., a rush of information on the suspect’s background has been circulating online, with The New York Times reporting that he attended high school at the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he was an athlete and the valedictorian of his graduating class in 2016, delivering a speech describing his class as “coming up with new ideas and challenging the world around it.”
With the only prior criminal activity linked to Mangione being a citation for trespassing in Hawaii, the suspect’s online presence shows a split in his path, with a Goodreads review he left on Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto referring to the Unabomber as an “extreme political revolutionary,” and friends and loved ones expressing concern for him on social media a month prior to the shooting of Thompson, according to The Daily Beast.
None of this, however, backs up Cruz’s statement.
“Person of Interest in the UHC CEO killing Luigi Mangione is being painted as left-wing by the New York Post but his X account shows someone whose thinking is shaped by the Online Right,” writes journalist Ari Drennen in a post to X.
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