I have written about Luigi Mangione before on this blog, more than once, and every single time I come back to the same conclusion, which is that I do not trust this man, not even a little bit. This week gave me yet another reason to feel that way, because his legal team has filed a motion asking the judge overseeing his New York state trial to either livestream the proceedings or, at minimum, provide an overflow feed so more journalists and members of the public can watch in real time. Jury selection is set to begin on September 8, and instead of quietly preparing his defense, Mangione is out here trying to turn a murder trial into appointment viewing. Let me just get this out of the way first, because I have said it before and I will say it again until people start listening, Luigi Mangione does not care about workers, does not care about healthcare reform, does not care about the cause that so many people have projected onto him. He cares about himself, and he cares about attention, and this livestream request is just the latest proof of that.
Think about what it actually means to ask for your own murder trial to be broadcast live to the entire country. This is not a civil rights case, this is not a landmark decision about corporate accountability, this is a man accused of shooting another human being in the back on a Manhattan sidewalk. And his response to facing consequences for that alleged act is to demand a spotlight. That tells you everything you need to know about who this person is. This is the move of someone who has never really had to sit with discomfort, who has never had to face a room and just deal with it, who instead reaches for the biggest possible audience the moment things start closing in. It is the instinct of someone who was sheltered, who was spoon fed, who grew up privileged enough that scenes and spectacles have always worked as a way of controlling a situation, rather than actually sitting inside the consequences of it. People who have dealt with real hardship, real accountability, real systems bearing down on them, generally do not respond by asking for more eyes on themselves. They respond by trying to survive the process. Mangione, on the other hand, seems to be treating his own criminal trial as a stage, and honestly, that should disturb anyone paying close attention, regardless of what they think about healthcare in this country.
A former federal prosecutor, Neama Rahmani, said something in a Fox News interview this week that I think cuts right to the heart of it, which is that defense attorneys almost never want a high-profile case broadcast, because publicity tends to put pressure on jurors to convict, not acquit. So why would Mangione’s team be pushing so hard for exactly the opposite of what conventional defense strategy would suggest. Rahmani’s theory is that Mangione has developed enough of a fan base, with surveys apparently showing something like ten to twenty percent of people believing that even if he did it, it was somehow justified, that his lawyers think more visibility could actually work in his favor. More cameras means more influencers weighing in, more sympathetic commentary flooding social media in real time, more pressure on jurors who might start second guessing a guilty verdict because of what the internet is saying about the guy on trial. That is not transparency, that is an attempt to turn public sentiment into a tool for jury nullification. And whether or not that specific legal strategy succeeds, the fact that it is even being attempted tells you that Mangione and his team understand exactly what kind of cultural moment they are sitting inside of, and they are trying to weaponize it.
This is where I have to say something that I know is going to upset a lot of people who consider themselves progressive or left leaning, because I am one of those people too. I am progressive, I have been for a long time, and I am so tired, genuinely exhausted, by how many people in these spaces have decided to defend Luigi Mangione as though he is some kind of folk hero, some working class avenger who finally stood up to the healthcare industry. He is not that. He never was that. Nothing about his background suggests a life spent grinding through the healthcare system the way so many ordinary Americans do, nothing about his actions since his arrest suggests someone motivated by collective liberation rather than personal notoriety. What I see, over and over again, is a man who understands that he has become a symbol, and who is milking that symbolism for everything it is worth, for money, for fame, for a cultural cachet that will follow him for the rest of his life regardless of the verdict. The livestream request fits perfectly into that pattern. It is not about accountability or transparency in the justice system, it is about making sure as many people as possible are watching Luigi Mangione, specifically, at all times.
And look, I get why the sympathy exists in the first place, I really do. The American healthcare system is broken in ways that hurt real people every single day, claim denials, crushing medical debt, insurance companies prioritizing profit margins over actual human lives, all of that anger is legitimate and it deserves an outlet. But channeling that legitimate anger into hero worship for a specific individual accused of killing another specific individual is not activism, it is projection. People are taking a systemic problem and pasting it onto one man’s face, and that man seems more than happy to let them keep doing it, because it benefits him directly. The sooner people in progressive spaces realize this is happening, the better off the actual movement for healthcare reform will be, because right now, energy that could be spent organizing, voting, pressuring legislators, pushing for actual policy change, is instead being spent defending a criminal defendant’s reputation on social media. I do not think most people are going to have that realization though, if I am being honest. Maybe a handful will, maybe some people reading this will roll their eyes and reconsider, but the broader cultural momentum behind Mangione as icon feels pretty locked in at this point, and that is genuinely disheartening to watch from where I sit.
Now let me pivot to the other side of this, because there is another side, and it is just as frustrating in its own way. You have got the Fox News crowd, and outlets like Newsmax and the Gateway Pundit, framing every single move Mangione’s defense makes as some kind of manipulative conspiracy, and in some of their coverage you can feel the bloodlust for a death penalty verdict sitting right under the surface. I want to be extremely clear about where I stand here, because I do not want to be lumped in with either extreme. I do not like Luigi Mangione, I have never liked Luigi Mangione, I do not think he deserves the folk hero treatment he has received. But I also do not want him dead, even if it turns out, through a fair trial, that he did take another person’s life. Wanting someone executed is not justice, it is vengeance dressed up in legal language, and I refuse to participate in that framing no matter who the defendant is or what they are accused of doing. The goal here should be accountability, not blood.
And that word, accountability, is really the center of everything I am trying to say. I want Luigi Mangione held accountable if the evidence supports it, and based on what has been reported so far, the evidence does seem to point in that direction, at least from where I am sitting as someone following this case from the outside. I want to be careful here too, because he is legally entitled to the presumption of innocence, this is all still allegations, a trial has not happened yet, and none of us should be pretending we know for certain what a jury will eventually decide. But if he did do what he is accused of doing, then prison is where he belongs, full stop, no folk hero exception, no carve out because a segment of the internet has decided he represents something bigger than himself. What frustrates me most about the way this case has unfolded is watching how much privilege has shaped the entire narrative around it. Luigi Mangione has the resources, the legal team, the platform, and frankly the physical attractiveness that the media apparatus seems endlessly fascinated by, to turn an alleged murder into a cultural moment rather than a straightforward criminal proceeding. Somebody without his background, without his money, without his education, accused of the exact same crime, would not be getting fan mail, would not be inspiring true crime podcasts sympathetic to their cause, would not have people online debating whether their alleged victim somehow deserved it. They would just be another name in the system, facing consequences without the cushion of a devoted online audience shielding them from the full weight of public judgment. That disparity is exactly why I think it matters so much that Mangione face real consequences if convicted. Letting privileged people escape accountability because they have successfully cultivated sympathy is precisely the kind of double standard progressives are supposed to be fighting against, not reinforcing.
So here is where I land, and I think it is a position that a lot of people are going to find unsatisfying precisely because it refuses to pick a side in the culture war version of this story. Luigi Mangione should face a fair trial. If that trial results in a conviction, he should go to prison, and he should stay there for a meaningful length of time, because taking another person’s life, if that is in fact what happened, is not something society should treat lightly regardless of how sympathetic the defendant’s politics or personal story might seem. At the same time, nobody should be calling for his execution, nobody should be treating this as an opportunity to satisfy some appetite for state violence, because that impulse is exactly as dangerous and exactly as dehumanizing as the impulse to turn him into a martyr. Both extremes are doing the same thing, really, they are using Luigi Mangione as a vessel for their own preexisting beliefs rather than engaging with him as an individual defendant in an individual criminal case. The left wants him to be a symbol of resistance against corporate greed. The right wants him to be a symbol of lawless leftist violence deserving of the harshest possible punishment. Neither camp is actually talking about Luigi Mangione the person, the alleged shooter, the guy currently asking a judge to livestream his own trial because he understands, on some level, that his fame is his greatest asset right now. Everyone is talking about what he represents to them, and in doing so, everyone is missing what is actually happening in that courtroom, and what is actually at stake for the family of Brian Thompson, who lost a father and a husband on a sidewalk in December of 2024, a fact that gets lost entirely too often in all of this online mythmaking.
I keep coming back to this blog to write about Luigi Mangione because I think he has become a kind of Rorschach test for how people process class anger, media spectacle, and criminal justice all at once, and I find that combination endlessly frustrating to watch unfold in real time. The livestream request is just the newest data point, but it fits a pattern I have been tracking since his arrest, a pattern of someone who understands attention as currency and who is spending that currency as aggressively as he possibly can, all while a significant chunk of the public either canonizes him or demonizes him without ever really grappling with the fact that he is, at the end of the day, a criminal defendant awaiting trial, nothing more mythic than that. I would like to see the actual trial happen without either side’s noise drowning it out. I would like to see whatever verdict comes down be shaped by evidence rather than by fandom or by bloodlust. And I would like, more than anything, for people to stop pretending that wanting Luigi Mangione held accountable for his alleged actions somehow makes you complicit in defending a broken healthcare system, because those two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and conflating them only helps him keep hiding behind a cause he was never actually fighting for in the first place.