Warren on UnitedHealth CEO Slaying: Violence Is Wrong, But ‘You Can Only Push People So Far’
On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) commented on the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by stating that “violence is never the answer, this guy gets a trial, who’s allegedly killed the CEO of UnitedHealth[care]. But you can only push people so far, and then, they start to take matters into their own hands.” And regulation is needed.
Host Joy Reid said, [relevant exchange begins around 36:20] “So, we’ve been talking a lot about this Luigi Mangione, the case about the UnitedHealthcare CEO. People are very angry at UnitedHealthcare, I think, for a good reason, denying care, and the whole system. And we were just talking in the previous block, killing a CEO is not the way you change. You have to regulate them, right? And so, we’ve got attempts to try to rein in some of these big businesses. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was your creation, the Trump administration wants to get rid of it. That is like protecting people from, like, credit card fraud. What happens if that goes away?”
Warren agreed that regulating, not killing CEOs is how you change things and answered, “So, look, terrible for individuals, but stop and think, overall, about the social contract. Part of the deal in how we’ve kept this democracy, this economy, this country on a fairly steady path for more than 200 years has been that those at the top pay a little more in taxes, are a little less rich than they otherwise might be, and everybody else at least gets a chance. And what happens, when you turn this into the billionaires run it all, is they get the opportunity to squeeze every last penny. And look, we’ll say it over and over, violence is never the answer, this guy gets a trial, who’s allegedly killed the CEO of UnitedHealth[care]. But you can only push people so far, and then, they start to take matters into their own hands.”
Reid responded, “They start to take — yeah.”
Warren continued, “We need regulation, in part, to rein those guys in. And you know where this is coming big time ahead of us? Is on taxes, that, the big boys, just like you said, their plan is to rush through this tax plan right at the beginning of 2025, get themselves a bunch more tax breaks, and then put the real burden of running this country on ordinary, hard-working families.”
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