The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2101 - Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooter CAPTURED…HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW
Tue, 10 Dec 2024
Daniel Penny is acquitted in the death of Jordan Neely in New York; the alleged shooter of the UnitedHealthcare CEO is captured, and we examine what we know about him; and fallout in Syria continues. Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/3WDjgHE Ep.2101 - - - DailyWire+: Finish your Christmas shopping with one click. Go to https://DailyWire.com now and give the gift of DailyWire+! Matt Walsh’s hit documentary “Am I Racist?” is NOW AVAILABLE on DailyWire+! Head to https://amiracist.com to become a member today! Get your Ben Shapiro merch here: https://bit.ly/3TAu2cw - - - Today's Sponsors: Birch Gold - Text "BEN" to 989898, or go to https://birchgold.com/ben, for your no-cost, no-obligation, FREE information kit. Kars4Kids - Donate your old car today at https://www.Kars4Kids.org/ben PreBorn! - Help save babies from abortion: https://www.preborn.com/Ben Roman - For treatment that works fast and lasts long, grab the moment. Learn more at https://www.Ro.co/Ben - - - Socials: Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3cXUn53 Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3QtuibJ Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3TTirqd Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPyBiB
Chapter 1: Who is the alleged shooter of the UnitedHealthcare CEO?
Folks, the alleged shooter of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last week has now been arrested. He was arrested yesterday in Altoona, Pennsylvania. This apparently happened because somebody at a local McDonald's saw him and his picture had been plastered across the news and they recognized him. They called the police. The police showed up.
Chapter 2: What was found on the shooter at the time of arrest?
They searched him and they found a so-called ghost gun, a 3D printed gun. They found a bevy of fake IDs. He apparently also had a two-page manifesto on him that was radically anti-capitalist in nature. And it's sort of fascinating to get into who this person was. I want to get into that. I also want to get into the public response to him, which to me is far more disturbing.
And yes, I've seen the comments on my recent shows talking about how, believe it or not, it is very, very bad. It is, in fact, evil to shoot the UnitedHealthcare CEO, even if you are upset at the healthcare industry in the United States. The fact that this has to be said is sort of incredible. But it does have to be said. So let's start with what we know about the alleged shooter here.
His name is Luigi Mangione. And we have a policy on this show that we don't normally say the names of mass shooters. He is not a mass shooter. He's an individual murderer. And obviously, his name is plastered all over the news. So you've seen him and you know about his name. His name is Luigi Mangione. He is 26 years old.
We know that he had upon him a 262-word handwritten document, so presumably written at the last minute, in which he said that UnitedHealthcare's market capitalization, even though it has grown American life expectancy, has not. This is according to the UK Daily Mail. He condemned companies...
Chapter 3: What does the shooter's manifesto reveal?
that, quote, continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Mangione then reportedly also added that he acted alone and that the entire effort was self-funded, saying, quote, to save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly I wasn't working with anyone. These parasites had it coming.
I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done. We'll get into that particular argument that it, quote, unquote, had to be done in a moment because one of the things about evil is that it tends to masquerade as good. Nothing in the American healthcare system changed because the UnitedHealthcare CEO was shot.
And in fact, one of the sort of outlying symptoms of evil is to use broad-based rationalizations about systemic problems in order to justify individual acts of evil, like murdering a father and CEO of a legal company.
That even if you don't like how the company runs, and I know a lot of doctors who don't like how UnitedHealthcare runs, they think UnitedHealthcare rips off customers and fights them at every turn. Whatever you think about UnitedHealthcare is irrelevant to the question of whether Brian Thompson should have been shot to death on the streets of New York. So more about the alleged shooter.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a review of his reading diet suggested that at some point his ideas about activism had crossed into an interest in violence.
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Chapter 4: How did the shooter's background contribute to his actions?
His circumstances were hard to reconcile with his standing, says the Wall Street Journal, less than a decade ago when he was a fresh-faced valedictorian at the nearly $38,000 a year Gilman School in Baltimore, which he attended from the sixth grade until he graduated in 2016. Again, this is a very upper-class person from a very upper-class family.
He ended up going to the University of Pennsylvania. where he would major in computer science and earn a master's degree. So this person has very high IQ, intelligent person, A particular person from that class named Luigi Mangione, according to the Wall Street Journal, was inducted into an academic honor society reserved for top students in electrical and computer engineering.
According to the Wall Street Journal, he appeared to enjoy Greek life, posting photos on Instagram of him and his Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brothers, often on a couch outside their house. In Maryland, the family is a well-known clan. They founded something called Lorien Healthcare, which is a senior care company with services including nursing and assisted living in 1977.
And they also developed something called Turf Valley Resort, which is a spa and conference center in Maryland and suburban Baltimore's Hayfield's Country Club. One of his cousins is a Republican member of the state House of Delegates. So again, very rich family, very wealthy family.
It appears, and you can examine his sort of political record all you want, and again, if you view his old Twitter account, for example, what you will see is a sort of bizarrely heterodox, sometimes center-right Twitter account. But what is very clear is that in recent months, he underwent some sort of serious health crisis, which was probably exacerbated by psychedelic use.
According to the Wall Street Journal, in recent months, there were hints he'd become estranged from friends and family, according to interviews, as well as his social media accounts, which might also shed light on his own health. So the banner photo of Mangione's ex-account features an x-ray of a person's back. And the picture is pretty horrifying. This appears to be like an L4, L5 surgery.
A spinal fusion surgery, which has a very low rate of success. It usually leaves people, or very often, at the very least, leaves people with significant pain for life. So this person must have had a massive back injury. According to his friends, he did that while surfing.
His Goodreads profile showed that he had been reading books about back pain and apparently suffered from chronic back pain that, quote, affected all parts of his life, including his ability to have a romantic life or enjoy sports such as surfing, according to a person named Josiah Ryan, who is spokesman for the founder of a Hawaii co-housing complex where Mangione lived a couple of years ago in 2022.
About six months ago, he says, Mangione stopped replying to texts and sort of disappeared. So Mangione told a person named RJ Martin and others at this co-living facility in Hawaii, a place called Surf Break, that he was returning to the mainland to have back surgery. In late 2022, Ryan said that Mangione sent friends at Surf Break photos of his spinal x-ray and injured back.
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Chapter 5: What role does mental health play in this case?
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Now, the family of the alleged shooter did put out a statement saying, quote, our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi's arrest. We offer prayers to the family of Brian Thompson. We ask people to pray for all involved. The statement also says the family only knows the facts of the case that have been released in the news. We're devastated by the news, the short statement says.
Now, obviously, windows into the mind of people who have had serious health problems, who are messing around with psychedelics. It is very difficult. And I've said this before about alleged shooters and alleged criminals right and left. Mental illness, psychedelic use, all of these things play a role.
But the generalized willingness by many members of the media and in the political class to justify this sort of stuff is a symptom of something deeper and sicker going on in our society. So for example, when this alleged shooter was still at large, according to the UK Metro, Some of America's highest profile amateur sleuths are flat out refusing to help identify the killer.
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Chapter 6: How does society react to acts of violence like this?
According to the Sunday Times, for example, his gang robbed more than a dozen banks between May 1933 and July 1934, stealing over 300 grand. He also destroyed thousands of mortgage records during the robberies, which made him very popular with poor people who were seeking to escape the payments that they owed to the banks.
So back in the 1930s, obviously, there's a lot of frustration and anger at the banking system because of the Great Depression. And so there was a sort of justification that went on of, for example, robbing banks or shooting bank managers. And as you can see in the alleged shooter in this case is justification of Ted Kaczynski.
You can easily see the logic of this extending out to pretty much every aspect of free market enterprise in the United States. Healthcare, oil companies, banks, literally anything. If you don't like the way a business is acting, according to this logic, you should shoot somebody. Okay, so why is that happening?
Well, there is now an entire media and political class dedicated to a simple proposition. America is so flawed, its systems are so corrupt, that criminality is a reasonable response to those flaws. This is demagoguery. In a democracy, in a republic, the way that you change policy is by electing politicians.
And then those politicians work with each other and with regulators and at the state level and at the local level in order to change the policy. Once you say that the system is so broken that the only
resort is revolutionary violence and not even useful revolutionary violence in the sense that you're overthrowing the system at least if you're going to make the case for revolution you have to make the case for overthrowing the entire system but that's not what these people are doing it's just nihilistic violence lashing out at a system that these people believe is targeting them in some way why do they believe that because instead of saying the truth truthfully instead of saying the real truth which is that these systems are really complex they are very difficult to fix
There's a whole class of demagogues in political office and in the media who spend their days saying that all problems are easily solved except that there is an intractable coterie who want to keep people in misery for their own profit. And there's just a bunch of people who don't care, for example, if you are – being denied a loan.
They're a bunch of people who don't care if you're having a tough time with the healthcare system. They don't care about, if they just cared more, then it would all be solved. This is ugly and it's stupid and it's not true. One of the easiest things in politics is to attribute malice to your opponents. But you know what? That actually doesn't get the job done.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications for healthcare in America?
That must be because there's a coterie of elite who don't care whether you can get single family housing, who want to exploit you, who want to harm you. And we should go after those people. This sort of demagoguery exists across the aisle. What's funny, again, is depending on the context in which it crops up, you'll see different crowds condemning it.
So to take a completely, the exact same argument, but now applied to a different context. Yesterday, Daniel Penny was acquitted in New York, as he well should have been. Daniel Penny is a hero. Daniel Penny was protecting people on a subway.
from the predations of a mentally ill, deeply schizophrenic drug abuser who is threatening them physically, according to witness testimony on the subway train. This trial never should have happened. It should not have happened in the first place. He was acquitted yesterday. OK, and I want to get into the acquittal in a moment. But what's really fascinating is the reaction to the acquittal.
So, for example, on the left, you're seeing the exact same arguments that are being made about the quote unquote racial systems of the United States, as you see being made about the health care system of the United States. So Hawk Newsome, famously of the Black Lives Matter movement, he says we need vigilantism here. He's basically making the Unabomber argument here.
He's making the alleged shooter argument here. The racial system of the United States, the justice system is so broken that perhaps people should be assassinated. Now, you hear that, a lot of my listeners, many of the people in the comments a couple of days ago, and they will say, well, that's evil what he said. Yes, yes, it is. Yes, it turns out it is. Here he was yesterday.
It's like everybody else has vigilantes. We need some black vigilantes. That's right. People want to jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud. How about we do the same when they attempt to oppress us? I'm tired. I know you're looking for us to be like, oh, go in March, go in March. No.
This weekend, I want you to hold a community event everywhere from the Bronx to Houston to Seattle to Florida. Black people, whole community event and talk about what you need.
Okay, again, he's calling for open vigilantism. This was the Black Lives Matter movement, by the way. The Black Lives Matter movement, just take the healthcare context away and take the Black Lives Matter movement and put it in. And it's the same exact argument. The system is so broken. It is so despicable that individual acts of vigilante evil are now justifiable, right?
Fiery, but mostly peaceful would be the argument in this particular context. It's a bad argument and it's a wrong argument. It is a morally wrong argument. And meanwhile, as far as the Daniel Penny acquittal, obviously this trial never should have taken place. Here is Daniel Penny explaining the circumstances, this is a few months ago, explaining the circumstances of what happened on the subway.
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Chapter 8: How does the media address the shooter and the incident?
The United Nations Security Council held a closed-door meeting Monday afternoon with the UN Special Envoy for Syria and the head of UN peacekeeping forces in charge of monitoring a ceasefire between Israel and Syria since the 1973 civil war.
It is amazing, by the way, that the number one concern of the UN Security Council at this point is Israel deploying to the other side of Mount Hermon in Syria in order to create a buffer zone so al-Qaeda and ISIS don't set up there. And the UN Security Council is like, this is the big deal. Not Turkish-backed Islamist forces taking over the entire country.
Israel setting up a buffer zone to prevent the invasion of the Golan Heights. Yeah, that's really where you should be putting your focus. Pretty amazing stuff. Hey, the reality is that Israel is currently doing everybody's dirty work by taking out pretty much every dangerous piece of weaponry in Syria. So Israel has knocked out the Syrian Navy now.
They completely destroyed it, sent it to the bottom of the Mediterranean. They are doing that because they do not want that in the control of Islamist fundamentalists. Israel has been taking out chemical weapons depots throughout Syria so they don't fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who are backed again by the Turkish government, which again is a NATO member, which is insane.
If the Biden administration had any stones at all, they'd be applying pressure to the Turks to moderate their friends over in Syria. But that's not what they're doing. Instead, apparently, there is a piece of news breaking that suggests that the Biden administration is releasing more money to, wait for it, wait for it, Iran.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Biden and Harris administration waived sanctions on Iran three days after the November election, providing Tehran access of upward to $10 billion in one's frozen funds. I mean, how sick and pathetic is this administration? They're trying to bail Iran out of its own failures.
The reality is the fall of the Assad regime is most damaging to Iran, which spent billions of dollars trying to not only uphold Bashar Assad, but to set up proxy groups across the Middle East by using Syria as a thoroughfare for weaponry.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, Iran spent decades and billions of dollars building a network of militias and governments, allowing it to exercise political and military influence across the Middle East. In a matter of weeks, the pillars of that alliance came crashing down.
Assad's removal is the climax so far in a cascade of events catalyzed by Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7th of last year, which resulted in the most fundamental change in Iran's security landscape since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. While toppling Saddam Hussein ended up helping Iran, this time Tehran is at a massive disadvantage.
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