In the latest episode of his eponymous news show, former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo criticized Americans who praised the alleged actions of CEO shooting suspect Luigi Mangione, but the commentary backfired as Cuomo tangled himself in a convoluted comparison to the case involving Daniel Penny, who was acquitted last week in the choking death of Jordan Neely on a New York subway in 2023.
The 35-minute video of the segment has since gone viral, with Cuomo attempting to dissect the debate surrounding Thompson’s brutal slaying through the lens of systemic double standards—particularly in how justice is applied to corporate elites versus marginalized individuals—which left many viewers perplexed.
Cuomo’s use of hypotheticals and his roundabout delivery made his argument difficult to follow as he challenged the public to reflect on what these violent incidents revealed about the state of American values.
“Daniel Penny is your kid. And Luigi is your kid. Which one do you support? I mean, do you have to even think about it?” he said in the segment, titled “Bizarro world: how is the CEO assassin a hero and Daniel Penny a zero?” which was posted to YouTube on Dec. 12.
Cuomo urged the audience to choose sides based on their emotional reactions to both tragedies, presenting the public debate over the actions of Penny and Mangione as a complex moral quandary.
The veteran newscaster argued that Penny did not intend to cause harm, which made his actions justifiable, even though the victim was Black. In contrast, he pointed out that Mangione’s alleged actions were driven by malicious intent, yet he was being hailed as a hero.
“I mean of course you can’t quit on your own family, but Daniel Penny didn’t want a bad outcome; all Luigi wanted was a bad outcome. And yet he is a folk hero and Daniel Penny is being attacked. Why?” Cuomo asked rhetorically, before answering his own question but tying himself in knots to get the point across, talking about: “The simple answer is the perspective on who was killed.”
Cuomo then explained that the difference in the public perception of Penny and Mangione is due to who the victims were. He suggests that Jordan Neely, a homeless Black man, is viewed with sympathy due to societal factors, while Brian Thompson, a wealthy CEO, was being villainized because of the role his company played in denying coverage for critical health care.
Cuomo questioned those who viewed Thompson’s death as justifiable because of the harm his company caused, despite Thompson personally having done nothing wrong. However, Cuomo’s argument also presented a somewhat confused stance on race, with some people accusing the newscaster of downplaying the racial dimension of the incident involving Penny.
By comparing Penny, a white man involved in the death of a Black homeless man, to Mangione, a white man accused of killing a white CEO, Cuomo hinted at racial dynamics, but his framing seemed to criticize the Black community for its emotional reaction.
Cuomo then highlighted what he perceived as a double standard in American society, suggesting race was playing a significant role in how these two unrelated incidents were being perceived, with the death of a Black man at the hands of a white man eliciting more anger, while the killing of a wealthy white man by another white man was ostensibly cheered by the public.
“The Black homeless man who was mentally ill and menacing people on the subway, somehow shouldn’t have been killed because Blacks get a hard time,” Cuomo said.
Mangione’s arrest last week at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, ended a nationwide manhunt for the masked killer five days after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down outside an investor conference in Midtown Manhattan on Dec. 4.
For days, social media lit up with speculation about the killer’s identity, with many people praising the shooter’s actions as those of a political revolutionary striking back against a corrupt corporate system. Early news reports described the shooter as “light-skinned,” which implied the suspect was a person of color. But then public support for the shooter intensified when Mangione, a white suspect, was identified and taken into custody.
As the details of the case began to unravel, many Black voices criticized the news media for immediately casting Mangione in a positive light — within minutes of his arrest, outlets already had Mangione pegged as a clean-cut Ivy League graduate from Maryland.
Soon after this, reports highlighted Mangione’s background as a graduate of Gilman School, a prestigious all-boys institution in Baltimore, where he earned the title of valedictorian in his senior year. A 2016 video quickly surfaced, capturing the moment when Mangione stepped onto the stage at his high school graduation to deliver an 8-minute valedictory speech.
Critics accused the media of trying to whitewash Mangione in the public eye, aiming to cast another white man as a sympathetic figure despite the serious charges he faced, including two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, one count of second-degree possession of a forged document, and one count of third-degree criminal possession of a firearm, according to court papers.
Meanwhile, Penny, a white former Marine, was acquitted in Manhattan court Monday following last year’s incident where Penny intervened after Neely began acting erratically on a subway car. Penny’s case underscored the current state of racial divisions in the country, with most Black people viewing Neely as a victim of unequal justice, while casting Penny as callous and criminal for holding Neely in a headlock until he lost consciousness. However, Penny’s white supporters continue to argue that he acted selflessly to protect other passengers as Neely posed a threat.
A brief description of Cuomo’s YouTube show highlights the segment as an exploration of the moral, class, and racial divides underscored by the deaths of Thompson, a wealthy white CEO, and Neely, a poor, homeless Black man.
But Cuomo did himself no favors during his impromptu attempt to unpack the dynamics fueling these debates, leaving many social media critics baffled and wondering what exactly he was trying to say.
“The CEO, who made his own success and was doing nothing wrong, gets assassinated and it’s good because his company denies people care in a way that people hate,” Cuomo said. “I just dont see the through-line of what kind of functioning society that is.”
On Instagram, a snippet of Cuomo’s poorly received commentary was making the rounds, sparking outrage and drawing heavy criticism in the comments section, with many people accusing Cuomo of being a very part of the divisive system he complained about.
“It’s the society you helped promote and create, Chris,” one person said, followed quickly by someone else who said, “I can’t believe he still has a career.”
One commenter criticized Cuomo, suggesting that his attempt to appear thoughtful and insightful fell flat because people haven’t forgotten his role in shaping flawed and misguided perspectives.
“lol he’s trying to be pensive and deep and he’s failing bc everybody still remembers his responsibility in crafting this kind of upside down society that built and rewards this backwards thinking.”
In one of the strongest responses, a commenter argued that society had failed Neely by leaving him to struggle with mental illness on the streets, while Brian Thompson, through his company’s greed, had caused the deaths of an untold number of people by denying insurance claims.
“The guy was mentally ill, that’s not his fault, society failed him by letting him live on the street and deteriorate,” this person wrote, suggesting Cuomo was missing the point. “Brian Thompson profited off the DEATH of others, he implemented an AI that had an error rate of 90% of denied claims. Thousands of people have died because UnitedHealth refused to cover their customers depending on them not having the means and energy to fight them in the courts. What they do is straight up EVIL, THATS WHY PEOPLE CHEER HIS DEATH. You cannot spit on people dying in the gutter as they beg for help and not expect someone to get angry.”
A few voices also praised Cuomo for broaching the debate in the public arena.
“Why the hell is Chris Cuomo making so much sense these days? Did I fall into the rabbit hole or climb back out of it?” someone said on the thread.
The debate deteriorated into a morbid discussion on who deserved to die more between Thompson and Neely, with one person calling Thompson “the head of the snake” while weighing the worthiness of both men.
In recent days, a separate debate sprang up over the media highlighting a video of Mangione’s high school valedictorian speech, arguing that such coverage reflected a pattern of framing white murder suspects as sympathetic and misunderstood.
Critics pointed to the stark contrast in how Black suspects are often vilified in the media and portrayed as public enemies, while white murder suspects are frequently coddled, with images or stories showcasing their education and achievements — reigniting the persistent debate surrounding biased media coverage.
Cuomo, whose embarrassing fall from grace at CNN, where he was fired in 2021, forced him to become a journeyman in the news industry, leading to his own show, “The Chris Cuomo Project,” and more recently a position with NewsNation as a full-time anchor.
