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The rhetoric on social media following the assassination of health care CEO Brian Thompson in New York earlier this month has been “extraordinarily alarming,” says US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
“It speaks to what’s really bubbling here in this country, and unfortunately we see that manifested in violence, the domestic violent extremism that exists,” he told CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday.
Some on social media have celebrated Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting Thompson to death, and shared their anger at America’s private health insurers.
Mayorkas said he was “alarmed by the heroism that is being attributed to an alleged murderer of a father of two children on the streets of New York.”
Thompson, 50, chief executive of America’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, was shot dead outside a Manhattan hotel early on December 4, triggering a massive manhunt for the killer.
Mangione, 26, was arrested days later in Pennsylvania and flown to New York, where he faces both federal and state charges, including first-degree murder in the pursuit of terrorism.
Investigators accuse him of carrying out a targeted killing, pointing to evidence that suggests long-standing animosity toward the American healthcare industry. On social media, support for Mangione has often been accompanied by complaints and grievances against the health insurance sector.
“We have been concerned for some time about the rhetoric on social media,” Mayorkas said Sunday. “We have seen narratives of hate. We have seen narratives of anti-government sentiment. We have seen personal grievances in the language of violence.”
Mayorkas, whose Department of Homeland Security is partly responsible for protecting Americans from domestic terrorism, said his department sees a “wide range of narratives” that “drive some individuals to violence.”
“It’s something that worries us a lot,” he said. “That’s a higher threat environment.”
But the 65-year-old, whose term leading the department will end next month, emphasized that Thompson’s killing was “the actions of one individual (and) do not reflect the American public.”
Mangione will remain behind bars in New York, as his lawyers said last week they would not file a bail request. He is in federal custody at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, the same facility where Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is being held.
He will probably be assigned a roommate and receive daily visits from medical and psychological services, police sources told CBS, the BBC’s American partner.
While New York does not have the death penalty, he faces four federal charges, including murder and stalking, that could make him eligible for the punishment. He also faces multiple state charges.
He is expected to be arraigned on those state charges in New York on Monday. Mangione faces 11 charges, including first-degree murder and murder as a terrorism crime.
