Comedian Bill Burr said in an interview published Tuesday that the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson should push healthcare companies to look inward rather than simply beef up security.
“I mean, if you look at all of this stuff, like the response to the Luigi [Mangione] thing, it wasn’t, ‘Maybe we need to look at what we’re doing if it makes some crazy person do this.’ [Healthcare executives’] response was to take their faces off the internet and get security,” Burr told Rolling Stone.
“It’s like, you don’t think you need to examine this?” he continued. “You’re not the president. You’re just the CEO of a business. Why do you need this level of security?”
Thompson, a husband and father of two, was murdered in December 2024. Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty in federal court on Aug. 14 to stalking and killing Thompson.
Attorney Rafael Mangual, the Nick Ohnell Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, pushed back on Burr’s remarks in comments to Fox News Digital.
“The only way to understand the comedian’s comments is as an endorsement of brutal and extrajudicial violence as a legitimate means of expressing one’s frustrations with corporate behavior. The fact of the matter is that Brian Thompson was a victim of a cold-blooded murder. Full stop.”
Mangual continued: “Luigi Mangione isn’t a hero or a martyr. He shot a man in the back for no other reason than that he objected to the business he was in.”
He argued that Burr’s comments avoid harder questions raised by treating homicide as a form of protest. “If homicide is on the table as a way to express various gripes, where do we draw the line? Who decides which lives are on the table? What pain is someone deeply offended by a comedian allowed to inflict as a result?” Mangual said. “I prefer these decisions be made by legislatures, judges and juries. So too should Mr. Burr.”
Elsewhere in the Rolling Stone interview, Burr reflected on how his comedic persona has shifted over the years, particularly regarding jokes about women. “This whole journey of being a comedian is when I stopped doing this and started doing a little more of that. Like, ‘Hey, Bill, maybe chicks aren’t psychos. Maybe you’re bringing something to the party, you know?'” he said. “My whole view on women is changed now. I look back on all of the dumb s— that I said. It had nothing to do with how I felt.”
“I wanted to be married. I wanted to have kids. I just didn’t know how to do it. So, what did I do? I blamed what I wanted. It’s stupid. I missed out on a lot of good times, being that brooding guy,” Burr added.
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