After the shooting death of health insurance CEO Brian Thompson, the Media Research Center loudly complained that people didn’t feel bad enough about it. Jorge Bonilla kept up the grumbling in a Dec. 11 post:
The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson continues to dominate the headlines. In the wake of the horrific shooting, the media have taken the left’s cue and begun to provide coverage that “bothsides” and normalizes murder.
Watch as CBS’s “Eye on America”, under the guise of nuance, amplifies voices that justify acts of terror. Below is the report in its entirety, as aired on the CBS Evening News on Wednesday, December 11th, 2024[.] […]
It is not clear what this report sought to accomplish beyond normalizing murder as a means of protesting against policies or institutions we do not like. Most of the voices featured in this report either celebrated or justified the murder. The report even amplified anger against the MdConald’s [sic] employee that identified the shooter and called law enforcement.
The interview with the “medical ethicist” sought to elicit empathy for her, given that UHC denied her procedure. She and Strassman then go into a whole thing about what she was sad or not sad about (the shooting itself). But her procedure was ultimately approved. And she is still allowed to go on, even after this bit of information is disclosed.
There is one single sentence of outright repudiation airing in the report. Everything else is either “nuance” or people on social media cheering elements of the murder.
Based on this report, it is clear what side of the story the media are on: the terrorist’s side. Compassion “denied”, indeed.
Nicholas Fondacaro spent a Dec. 12 post complaining that shady “ghost guns” were being besmirched — something the MRC likes to do — because Thompson’s alleged killer used one:
In the wake of the arrest of the left-wing assassin who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, it was reportedly discovered that he used a 3D-printed, so-called “ghost gun.” Never letting a good crisis go to waste, on Tuesday, The View wanted to exploit the situation to push for gun control. ABC News co-hosts Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin demanded a crackdown on homemade firearms and betrayed their ignorance of it being an American tradition dating back centuries and to before the founding.
Behar was manic because the U.S. Supreme Court was set to hear a case regarding the Biden administration’s actions against unfinished 80-percent lower receivers.
“Another point, these ghost guns are up for discussion at the Supreme Court right now so let us hope that they do the right thing, because, let me see, they do not have serial numbers,” she huffed, as if serial numbers allowed authorities to magically pin point where a gun was on the globe.
Flaunting her ignorance of the work involved and equipment required to finish an 80-percent lower, Behar decried how “they are sold online as do-it-yourself kits.” She falsely claimed a guy can make one of these guns “the same way that he can text me.”
She went onto to say she hoped Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett would join the liberal justices “to save this country.”
Despite being a former federal prosecutor, Hostin proved that she didn’t know anything about the case before the Supreme Court by conflating 80-percent unfinished lowers, which are made of metal and need to milled out with power tools, with 3D-printed models: “So, we’re not sure why this happened, but we do know the instrumentality that was used, and it was a ghost gun that can be printed on your computer.”
[…]Of course, Hostin completely ignored that it was completely legal in America to make your own firearm and that it was a tradition dating back centuries. But that didn’t stop her from using to besmirch America, one of her favorite hate objects[.]
Bonilla returned for another Dec. 12 post claiming that Geraldo Rivera — whom he falsely described as “The Artist Formerly Known as Jerry Rivers” — was “giving the shooter credit for driving the discussion on healthcare reform.”
Fondacaro further huffed on the MRC’s Dec. 13 podcast:
On that issue, we’ve been disgusted by the liberal media’s attempts to justify the killing as some sort of vector for social good. We’ve been hearing a lot of ‘violence is never justified, BUT…’coming for many corners of the liberal media.
I bring up that healthcare hypocrisy has run amuck on The View as not-so-sunny co-host Sunny Hostin exploited the Thomson’s death to push for universal healthcare. The large liberal ladies have also been busy decrying RFK Jr.’s calls to crackdown on weight loss drugs they use and denouncing his calls for people to exercise and eat healthy.
Bonilla returned to complain in a Dec. 15 post:
Not once, but twice did Bernie Sanders offer some version of “murder is bad, BUT”. Not once did Welker interrupt or fact-check Sanders. In fact, she moved on to her next question, which was on minimum wage.
There was no repudiation from Welker with regard to Warren or Sanders’s statements. The Bernie interview was tonally opposite from Welker’s interview with President-Elect Donald Trump, some might say (D)ifferent, which featured constant interruptions and attempted fact-checks.
This interview lines up with the rest of the media’s coverage of the UnitedHealthcare shooting, and its disturbing normalization of murder in furtherance of goals that align with the left.
Bonilla didn’t explain how the alleged killer’s use of a ghost gun — which his colleague Fondacaro apparently approves — does not result in “disturbing normalization of murder.”
Chrstian Toto used his Dec. 28 column to rehash the MRC’s lament that late-night TV made jokes about it:
Why are late-night TV audiences cheering on Mangione? It’s a complex constellation of reasons, from the Left’s embrace of political violence to our increasingly divided age.
One possible culprit? Late-Night TV.
[…]The status quo is maddening at times, and few politicians are offering solid alternatives or solutions. That’s on them and, by extension, us.
Killing a prominent healthcare CEO is the worst way to address the issue.
Tell that to Mangione’s fan base. To them, he’s the hero of this story, not someone accused of an assassination.
These propaganda shows have been dehumanizing their political opponents for years. Trump is Hitler … and his fans are just as bad.
Toto also seems to have forgotten that the outlet that publishes him regularly goes Godwin by smearing people it doesn’t like as “digital brownshirts.“
Toto then tried to do a comparison of purported right-wing reaction to alleged comedian Tony Hinchcliffe smearing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean” at a Trump rally, which Toto did admit was “tasteless”:
What corrupt reporters downplayed, for obvious reasons, was the crowd’s reaction to the joke. It bombed.
Turns out MAGA nation sensed a tacky quip when they heard it. Even Hinchcliffe admitted it.
“OK, all right. We’re getting there. Normally I don’t follow the National Anthem,” Hinchcliffe said, backpedaling in real time.
Did they, though? Trump never criticized Hinchcliffe for saying such a vulgar thing at his rally, and the MRC itself never specifically denounced it, only complained that non-right-wing media accurately reported on it.
Toto’s proof that Hinchcliffe’s joke didn’t go ever well was an article from right-wing website The Blaze headlined “Fun-sucking Democrats will REGRET turning Tony Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico joke into a controversy.” Which tells us that right-wingers really weren’t that offended by it.
That makes it hard for Toto to credibly insist that only liberals are the ones dehumanizing people they don’t like.