Comedian Bill Burr is urging healthcare executives to examine their own business practices in the wake of the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arguing that the industry's first instinct was to increase security rather than ask what might have motivated the killer.
In an interview published Tuesday with Rolling Stone, Burr said the response to the case involving Luigi Mangione was not to consider whether corporate policies had driven someone to violence. Instead, he said, executives moved to remove their faces from the internet and hire protection.
«It wasn't, 'Maybe we need to look at what we're doing if it makes some crazy person do this,'» Burr said. «[Healthcare executives'] response was to take their faces off the internet and get security.»
He continued: «It's like, you don't think you need to examine this? You're not the president. You're just the CEO of a business. Why do you need this level of security?»
Thompson, a husband and father of two, was murdered in December 2024. Mangione pleaded guilty in federal court on Aug. 14 to murdering Thompson, a development that has renewed public debate over the killing and its aftermath.
Burr's comments drew a sharp rebuke from Rafael Mangual, the Nick Ohnell Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who told Fox News Digital that the comedian's remarks amount to an endorsement of extrajudicial violence.
«The only way to understand the comedian's comments is as an endorsement of brutal and extrajudicial violence as a legitimate means of expressing one's frustrations with corporate behavior,» Mangual said. «The fact of the matter is that Brian Thompson was a victim of a cold-blooded murder. Full stop.»
Mangual rejected any suggestion that Mangione should be viewed sympathetically. «Luigi Mangione isn't a hero or a martyr,» he said. «He shot a man in the back for no other reason than that he objected to the business he was in.»
He warned that treating the killing as anything other than a crime opens the door to dangerous questions. «Expressing anything other than condemnation of such an act is to open an enormous can of worms that Burr clearly hasn't contemplated,» Mangual said.
«His remarks reveal that he hasn't grappled with the most basic questions. For example, if homicide is on the table as a way to express various gripes, where do we draw the line? Who decides which lives are on the table? What pain is someone deeply offended by a comedian allowed to inflict as a result?»
Mangual added that such decisions should be left to the justice system. «I prefer these decisions be made by legislatures, judges and juries,» he said. «So too should Mr. Burr.»
The interview also touched on Burr's broader evolution as a performer. Once known for politically incorrect material, he acknowledged to Rolling Stone that his perspective has changed, including his past language about women.
«This whole journey of being a comedian is when I stopped doing this and started doing a little more of that,» he said. «Like, 'Hey, Bill, maybe chicks aren't psychos. Maybe you're bringing something to the party, you know?'»
Burr said his view of women has shifted and that he now looks back critically on things he said earlier in his career. «My whole view on women is changed now. I look back on all of the dumb s--- that I said. It had nothing to do with how I felt,» he said.
He explained that his old attitude came from personal frustration rather than genuine belief. «I wanted to be married. I wanted to have kids. I just didn't know how to do it. So, what did I do? I blamed what I wanted. It's stupid. I missed out on a lot of good times, being that brooding guy.»
The exchange highlights how the Thompson murder continues to reverberate through American culture, with figures in entertainment and media weighing in on questions of corporate responsibility, public anger and the boundaries of acceptable speech. For healthcare companies, the episode has already prompted visible changes in how executives protect themselves, even as critics argue that the industry should focus on the policies that generate public resentment.