Comedian Chris Rock stunned viewers during his monologue for “Saturday Night Live” when he made crass jokes about the brutal assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
“He actually killed a family, a man with kids…I have condolences for the healthcare CEO. This is a real person, but sometimes drug dealers get shot. You seen The Wire, right?” Rock said Saturday night from Studio 8H.
“I really feel sorry for the family,” Rock said. “I mean everybody’s fixated on how good-looking this guy looks. If he looked like Jonah Hill, nobody would care. They would have already given him the chair and he’d be dead,” Rock added, discussing accused shooter Luigi Mangione.
The quip swiftly drew backlash from viewers who were shocked by Rock’s blunt delivery.
“I stopped watching after the sick joke about Brian Thompson. After feigning to offer condolences to the family of the murdered man, he made a joke about him being a drug dealer,” one user wrote on X in reaction to the monologue.
“This is disgusting. The healthcare system is horrible, but murdering people on the street is evil,” another user agreed.
“Joking about a murder is pathetic,” a third seethed.
Other users nitpicked the fact Rock, 59, referred to Thompson as a drug dealer, saying the fatally shot CEO didn’t deal in the pharmaceutical industry, and those in the healthcare industry, “Don’t ‘deal drugs.”
The show then dedicated more air time to remarks about the shocking execution, with a sketch of Sarah Sherman as legal commentator Nancy Grace, who called out the internet’s obsession with the “sex icon” shooter.
Sherman, playing Grace, opened the sketch by saying “It’s game over Luigi,” to a sad sound from the Super Mario Bros game.
She expressed her shock that people were all “hot and bothered” by the 26-year-old Mangione, offering that he “looks like Dave Franco with Eugene Levy eyebrows”
“I mean, really, what is going on in this country? Y’all, this man is not a sex icon. This man is — and I cannot say this any clearer — a murderer,” she continued.
SNL cast member Kenan Thompson joined in the sketch as an unemployed man named Donnell Davis, and quipped “Back in the day, you could impress your old lady with a little poem, now you got to write a manifesto,” referring to Mangione’s manifesto filled with rage towards “mafioso” healthcare industry leaders.
“You know what my health insurance plan is? It’s called ‘hoping it goes away,’” Thompson’s Davis said.
The segment comes as accused killer Mangione — a University of Pennsylvania graduate — is accused of fatally shooting Thompson as the 50-year-old CEO walked to the Hilton hotel on Sixth Avenue.
The alleged assassin led police on a five-day manhunt that ended when he was taken into custody at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Monday after an employee recognized him and called the police.
Police recovered a 3D-printed pistol with a homemade silencer, a loaded Glock magazine, and multiple fake IDs in his backpack.
He also had a handwritten manifesto-type document that was addressed to “the Feds” that accused health insurance companies of corporate greed.
Ballistics from the ghost gun matched the shell casings recovered from the crime scene, with Mangione’s fingerprints matching a water bottle and a granola bar wrapper found near the crime scene, according to police.
Mangione has most recently secured a former veteran Manhattan prosecutor, Karen Friedman-Agnifilo, to defend him as he faces murder charges in the Big Apple slaying.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced Tuesday that the alleged gunman could be extradited from Pennsylvania to New York City as early as Tuesday on murder charges for the fatal slaying.
