“The View” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin faced backlash from her fellow panelist Friday as she openly condemned the “far-left” for celebrating the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Former Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz, left-wing journalist Ken Klippenstein and other left-wing individuals publicly mocked the assassination of 50-year-old Thompson who was shot outside the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday. Co-host Joy Behar appeared to deny that it is the far-left celebrating the CEO’s death and immediately pivoted to criticizing Republicans’ approaches to healthcare policies.
“I too was so disturbed. I saw some prominent figures on the far-left who are celebrating this, and we have lost our collective conscience,” Griffin said, leading Behar to ask how she knows they are on the political left. “It’s online, I’m not even going to amplify and say who because it is ghoulish, it is disgusting, it is evil. If you want to effect change in this country, it is a democracy, organize, activate, get out and talk to people, vote for your congressman. Violence is absolutely never the answer and to single out one individual because you have an issue with a company, a corporation or an entire industry that’s been fraught for decades, it’s horrible.”
“Then don’t vote for Republicans because they want to overthrow Obamacare,” Behar said.
Co-host Sunny Hostin argued that the mockery of Thompson’s death is “reflective” of the nation’s outrage about their healthcare and over the amount of money his company made.
Lorenz wrote a piece on UserMag titled “Why ‘we’ want insurance executives dead,” where she argued that Americans are “fed up with our barbaric healthcare system” and the executives who allegedly inflict “pain, suffering, and death on millions of innocent people.” (RELATED: ‘The View’ Co-Hosts Attempt To Explain Away Biden’s Hunter Pardon By Blaming Trump)
“People have very justified hatred toward insurance company CEOs because these executives are responsible for an unfathomable amount of death and suffering,” she wrote. “I think it’s good to call out this broken system and the people in power who enable it. Again, not so they can be murdered, but so that we can change the system and start holding people in power accountable for their actions.”
Left-wing journalist Ken Klippenstein has continuously been staunchly critical of Thompson and UnitedHealthcare on X and Substack. He defended the widespread jokes about the assassination in a Wednesday post, stating that they are critical of “the rapacious healthcare system he personified.”
As someone who has United health insurance, I just want to say: █████ █████. https://t.co/O6qqeeLYfL
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) December 4, 2024
Anthony Zenkus, a Colombia professor and the director of education for The Safe Center, said he will mourn the alleged deaths of 68,000 Americans “who needlessly die every year” at the hands of Thompson.
Griffin argued that Obamacare, which passed in 2010, created monopolies in the healthcare system. Hostin replied that Obamacare is the closest policy resembling universal healthcare and expressed fear that Health and Human Services (HHS) nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will disassemble the healthcare system.
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