Billionaire Peter Thiel was momentarily speechless and then struggled for a response when asked about people who consider Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHeathcare CEO Bryan Thompson, a hero.
Thiel appeared on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” where the host asked him, “to those who think this shooter is a hero because he did it, because he said this healthcare executive is presiding over a healthcare system which kills thousands of Americans by denying them coverage. What would you say to them?”
After being speechless for nearly 20 seconds, Thiel offered up a halting answer, telling Morgan, “It’s, I don’t know what, what to say? I, I think I still think you have, you should try to make an argument. And I, I think this is, this is you should, you know, there may be things wrong with our health care system, but you have, you have to make an argument, and you have to try to find a way to convince people and and change, change it by by that, and this is, you know, this is not going to work.”
“I don’t know. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, yeah, I mean, all sorts of things I, I could say about it, but I don’t, I don’t think, and I again, I think, you know,” he added.
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Thiel added, “I don’t want to go into all the particulars here, but I don’t think, I don’t think there’s anything heroic about him.”
During the episode, the billionaire learned on air from Morgan that Mangione had reposted words from a speech he’d made about the heads of Silicon Valley companies. Thiel responded that some views can be dangerous to express, but there shouldn’t be a restriction on speech.
“There’s always a part of me that thinks articulating certain views is always very dangerous, and there are all these anti-free speech arguments that we should restrict speech because it’s going to trigger people in all kinds of crazy ways,” he said. “But I would have never thought that saying something like that would be that triggering.”
The speech Mangione posted was of Thiel giving a speech on Silicon Valley leaders and them having Asperger’s.
“A lot of the great startups in Silicon Valley seem to be run by people who are suffering from a mild form of Asperger’s,” Thiel said at the time. “I think we need to always turn this fact around and view this as an indictment of our whole society. What does it say about our society when anyone who does not suffer from Asperger’s, who is socially well-adapted, will be talked out of all of their original creative ideas before they’re even fully formed?”
On Monday, 26-year-old Ivy League grad Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, following a five-day manhunt after the shooting last Wednesday outside the New York Hilton Midtown. He has been charged with second-degree murder, forgery and three counts of illegal weapons possession and was denied bail.
