Trump blasts 'sickening' admiration for CEO shooting suspect Luigi Mangione: 'It was a horrible killing'

PALM BEACH, FLORIDA: President-elect Donald Trump called out the "sickening" admiration fLuigi Mangione, the 26-year-old Ivy League graduate suspected of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City earlier in December.

The 78-year-old bemoaned during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort, "I think it’s really terrible that some people seem to admire him — like him. It was cold-blooded, just a cold-blooded, horrible killing."

Donald Trump calls public admiration for Luigi Mangione a 'sickness'

Donald Trump added that he hoped it was "fake news" that so many people were admiring a man who was charged with murdering a husband and father of two sons, as per the New York Post.

He continued, "You just can’t believe some people — and maybe it’s fake news — I don’t know. It seems that there’s a certain appetite for. I don’t get it."

"How people can like this guy — that’s a sickness actually, that’s really very bad. Especially the way it was done, it was so bad — right in the back," Trump wondered. 

Many on the internet have praised Mangione, fawning over photos of his six-pack abs and glowing about him railing against the US private health insurance industry in a handwritten manifesto.

Former Washington Post media journalist Taylor Lorenz said she took "joy" in the killing, according to the New York Post.

Similarly, late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel joked about his writers salivating over Mangione’s physique and expressing a desire to be placed on the jury that deliberates his case, per the outlet.

Moreover, Sen Elizabeth Warren channeled the rage against health insurance companies to downplay Thompson’s execution. The Massachusetts Democrat said, "Violence is never the answer, but people can only be pushed so far."

However, in a follow-up statement, Warren said, "Violence is never the answer. Period. I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder."

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow linked Luigi Mangione to Donald Trump

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow linked Luigi Mangione with Donald Trump's upcoming administration by drawing a connection between the suspected shooter's support for "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski and similar statements made by Blake Masters, who is reportedly in consideration to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), according to Newsweek.

Mangione earlier wrote a positive review of the book 'Industrial Society and Its Future' by Kaczynski, who killed three people and injured more than 20 others in bombings across the nation in the '70s, '80s, and '90s.

Meanwhile, Masters, who ran for the Senate in Arizona in 2022, called Kaczynski a "subversive thinker" during a podcast interview for that election.

Maddow highlighted these similarities on Tuesday, December 10 on a segment of 'The Rachel Maddow Show', which was shared on X (formerly Twitter) by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein.

The MSNBC host said, "The fact that he's a professed Unabomber fan is unsettling. I might venture it's even more unsettling that Donald Trump's reported choice to run the ATF is also a self-professed fan of the Unabomber."