Taylor Lorenz, Luigi Mangione, and the Left’s Obsession with Violence

On CNN, condoning murder seems to be just as acceptable as casting a vote for Donald Trump.

In fact, backing Trump might be even more frowned upon, considering how CNN Senior Correspondent Donie O’Sullivan posed this question to Taylor Lorenz:

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be likened to a Trump supporter,” O’Sullivan reassured her, “but some of the reasons people can’t comprehend why others empathize with Mangione” — referring to Luigi Mangione, the killer of healthcare executive Brian Thompson — “appears similar to the misunderstanding from the media regarding Trump supporters.”

Lorenz, a former reporter for the Washington Post and New York Times who has transitioned into an online “influencer,” stirred the outrage she intended with her sympathetic take on Mangione’s appeal to the radical left.

“You’ll notice women, especially, feeling like, oh my God, here’s this man who’s a revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s attractive, who’s young, who’s intelligent, and who seems to be a morally good man, which is quite rare,” she enthused to O’Sullivan.

Lorenz certainly knows how to attract attention — she may be out of a high-profile media role, but her journalism has always focused on making headlines rather than reporting them.

Her appearance on CNN’s “MisinfoNation: Extreme America” Sunday was as notable for O’Sullivan’s inquiries as it was for Lorenz’s shock-inducing responses.

If, as O’Sullivan suggested on-air, the motivations behind voting for Trump and idolizing a murderer both stem from “a lot of people being really really desperate,” then the true story CNN should be addressing is the stark contrast between the political right and the violent left.

Lorenz accepted O’Sullivan’s notion: she agreed that Trump supporters and Mangione enthusiasts are similar because “They desire someone to challenge the system. They want someone to dismantle these barbaric institutional establishments.”

Brian Thompson wasn’t an institution; he was an individual whose murder did not alter anything significant.

Under Trump, the populist right mobilized to succeed at the polls and utilize legitimate authority to disrupt institutions — which is precisely what the former president continues to do.

The January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters was an anomaly within what has otherwise been a non-violent political movement advocating for reform.

However, violence is all too typical in left-wing activism on the streets — as illustrated by the mentality evident in the Lorenz interview.

Confronted with electoral defeat and an administration leveraging its mandate to reform institutions, the left seems to have lost faith in politics and turned to violence, recently escalating from vandalism to arson, as seen in New Mexico against Tesla cars and Republican offices.

While Lorenz and O’Sullivan may not be throwing Molotov cocktails, they are content to equate a murderer’s fan club with Trump’s supporters.

Progressives who reject violence should be the loudest voices decrying this moral equivalence.

Nevertheless, even the non-violent left perpetually characterizes Trump and his supporters using rhetoric that suggests the necessity for violence — after all, who would stand idle if the nation truly faced a “fascist” takeover?

The glorification of Mangione reveals another aspect of the left’s affinity for violence over politics: it possesses a romantic allure that election campaigns simply cannot offer.

While the political right envisions fine-tuning tariffs, the Taylor Lorenz left fantasizes about “this man who’s a revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome . . .”

Much like Che Guevara, the infamous Communist revolutionary who became a symbolic pinup for college leftists, Mangione merges sexuality and violence with a self-righteous outlook characteristic of radicals.

This intoxicating mix seems to appeal to Lorenz — and possibly to CNN as well.

It certainly generates buzz.

The Trump movement has its emotional and aesthetic dimensions, yet they are primarily expressed through genuine political engagement in GOP primaries and statewide elections.

Its more extravagant manifestations are found not in protests, but in memes and social media discussions.

The left, on the other hand, increasingly diverts its emotions away from candidates and policy debates and channels them into street actions and violent fantasies — whether in the form of fearful anticipations of a Nazi dictatorship or exhilarating dreams of violent insurrections against authority, or perhaps a combination of both.

Rather than producing documentaries on “extreme America” that equate Trump supporters with murderers’ defenders, CNN would serve its audience better by highlighting the distinctions between a politically viable right and a dangerously immature left.

Yet, perhaps the same sensationalism that characterizes Taylor Lorenz’s approach may also be the only method CNN knows to sell content.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review and editor-at-large of The American Conservative.