Elon Musk has addressed the controversial manifesto linked to suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione, which has sparked widespread debate and speculation.
Mangione, 26, was arrested on Monday and charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive Brian Thompson, who was fatally shot last week in New York City. He is expected to plead not guilty.
No motive for the shooting has been established, but a handwritten manifesto purportedly found with Mangione at the time of his arrest indicates that Thompson’s killing may have been motivated by anger about the health insurance industry, with the suspect allegedly justifying the homicide by writing: “I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”
Elsewhere in the manifesto, Mangione said the “US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy.”
“United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the U.S. by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but [h]as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it,” he added.
Christophe Petit-Tesson/AP
The snippet of the document has been widely shared on X, formerly Twitter, and on Wednesday morning, Musk, who is the world’s richest man, offered a solution to Mangione’s claim.
“Nothing would do more to improve the health, lifespan and quality of life for Americans than making GLP inhibitors super low cost to the public. Nothing else is even close,” he said. GLP inhibitors are a medication that treats type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Mangione, who has been described by some as an “anticapitalist” and a “hero” for taking a radical stance against the American health insurance industry, previously shared posts on his X account praising Musk for his “commitment to long-term civilization success.”
It referenced a post by Musk from March 2024 in which he claimed he was “in a battle to the death with the anti-civilizational woke mind virus.”
Mangione also appears to have read books about Musk on the book review website Goodreads.
Meanwhile, other posts shared by Mangione lamented “wokeism” in society. In another post, he responded to a claim that God had been replaced by people “worshipping at the DEI shrine, using made-up pronouns like religious mantras and firing professors for saying men can’t get pregnant.”
In response, Mangione shared a link to an article from The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the U.K. which railed against an anti-hate-crime law introduced in Scotland in 2021.
He also shared content praising venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who introduced JD Vance to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2021. In a video shared by Mangione, Thiel talks about a “strange phenomenon in Silicon Valley,” where the “great startups seem to be run by people who suffer from a mild form of Asperger’s.”
“I think we always need to turn this fact around and view this as an indictment of our whole society,” the former PayPal CEO said in the video.
On Monday, after Mangione’s identity was made public, an X account that appeared to belong to him was suspended for “violating” the website’s rules. However, hours later, the account was reinstated. It now has more than 196,000 followers.
Mangione is an Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real-estate family.
His grandfather, Nicholas Mangione, was a self-made real-estate developer who owned country clubs, nursing homes and a radio station, according to an obituary in The Baltimore Sun.
Nicholas and his wife Mary Mangione also established the Mangione Family Foundation, which has supported hospitals, colleges and universities in the Baltimore area.
He told the Sun in 1995 that he was passing the torch to his eldest sons.
“I didn’t have two nickels to rub together when my father died when I was 11, yet I still became a millionaire,” he said. “What other country can you do that in? None that I can think of.”
One of Mangione’s cousins, Nino Mangione, has served in the Maryland House of Delegates since 2019. His Facebook page describes him as a “conservative Republican fighting for freedom and the future of Maryland.”
