The outpouring of gleeful public support for Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has been as striking as it has been polarizing—but not along the familiar left/right fault lines. Rather, it’s highlighted a divide between those perceived as cultural insiders—politicians, media figures, and pundits—and the rest of the public.
As politicians and commentators across the political spectrum moved to condemn the shooting and chastised those celebrating it, the response has been equally ferocious, directed not only at mainstream Democrats but also at conservative pundits like Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh, who found themselves skewered by their own audiences for failing to read the room.
In their respective podcasts—with episodes titled “The EVIL Revolutionary Left Cheers Murder!” and “Why The Left Is Really Celebrating The Murder Of A CEO”—Shapiro and Walsh this past week accused liberals of glorifying vigilante violence—only to find out that out their followers seemed to feel similarly. Shapiro was derided as “out of touch,” with one commenter unsubscribing in disgust: “I’m a Republican. I voted for Trump. I am unsubscribing from Ben. They not like us.”
The bipartisan outrage reveals a deeper truth: what has often been framed as a backlash to the ‘radical left’—and ruthlessly exploited by figures like Shapiro and Walsh—is, in reality, a much broader rejection of the status quo. The reason this anger appears partisan is not because it targets left-wing ideology, but because Democrats appear to be the only party still rhetorically committed to defending the existing social (and political) order. This perception endures even in the face of real policy differences between the two parties on issues like health care. In the public imagination, the symbolic fight against the status quo matters more than the substance of governance.
Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party in 2016 severed its rhetorical ties to establishment politics, allowing Republicans to position themselves as the party of populist rage. From the moment he descended the gilded escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, Trump positioned himself as a wrecking ball aimed at the system.
His appeal wasn’t rooted in ideology, but in rage—rage at institutions that, in the eyes of a significant portion of the electorate, promised hope and prosperity but seemed to deliver only corruption and dysfunction. His campaign wasn’t about conservatism. It was about contempt for everything Washington represents. And this anti-establishment stance, more than any policy position, is what resonated with millions of Americans across traditional party lines.
This scorched-earth approach to politics forced Democrats into an uneasy defensive crouch—and a rhetorical trap. By shielding the system from Trump’s onslaught, they unwittingly cast themselves as its champions, tethering their credibility to institutions many Americans had long since deemed hopelessly broken and corrupt.
The credibility gap was on full display in the 2024 election, as the party rallied around its familiar “save democracy” pitch. But for millions of voters, the notion that there’s even a functioning democracy worth saving was laughable. In a country where the preferences of the bottom 90 percent of Americans have a near-zero impact on public policy, until Democrats shake their image as defenders of the status quo, they risk becoming a marginalized political force.
The tragic irony, of course, is that Trump’s movement offers no solutions to the problems it claims to address. His administration will not alleviate the struggles of ordinary Americans. It will only further entrench the plutocratic status quo. Similarly, nothing is likely to come of the morbid fandom surrounding Luigi Mangione. He is a meme, not a movement.
But both Trump’s re-election, then, and public’s reaction to Mangione’s actions reveal a harsh truth about the political moment we are living through: Americans are increasingly fueled by rage at society’s failure to address the everyday problems they face, but are not seeking solutions. The public’s contempt for the establishment is not a controlled fire, it is a consuming blaze; what they want, above all, are personalities who can channel that.
And in harnessing that rage, both Trump and Mangione reveal a culture willing to tolerate—and even celebrate—vile acts, so long as they are inflicted on those who symbolize what we have come to collectively despise.