Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is “concerned” about “rhetoric on social media” that supports accused CEO shooter Luigi Mangione, who is currently imprisoned in New York. “We’ve seen narratives of hate. We’ve seen narratives of anti-government sentiment,” online, Mayorkas told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan Sunday.
“We’ve seen personal grievances in the language of violence, accompanying or being a part of those narratives, is something that we’re very concerned about, that, that is a heightened threat environment,” he continued. “I still am alarmed, though, by the heroism that is being attributed to an alleged murderer of a father of two children on the streets in New York City.”
Mangione was charged with murder in connection with the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson Tuesday. He was indicted on a total of 11 charges, including first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder. Thompson was fatally shot Dec. 4. In the days that followed, Mangione was elevated to a kind of folk hero status on social media.
That rhetoric is not “purely political,” Mayorkas added. “We see a wide range of narratives that really drive some individuals to violence, and we have a responsibility to know the threat landscape and see what we can do working with communities to prevent that violence from actually occurring.”
The department saw similarly strong rhetoric in the aftermath of the hurricane that hit North Carolina, he said, and “we had to pull FEMA workers out of the field who were responding to victims’ needs because of false information that was deliberately disseminated on social media, such as, ‘the FEMA worker is coming to take your land.’”
“Absolutely false. They are there at great personal sacrifice to help others. That’s who they are. And we had to pull them from the field by reason of that threat environment, temporarily, albeit, but nevertheless impactfully,” Mayorkas also said.
You can watch the clip from “Face the Nation” in the video above.
