UnitedHealth Employee Fired After ‘Cheering’ Trump Shooter

A UnitedHealthcare employee is out of a job after a video spread online showing her reacting to the weekend assassination attempt targeting President Donald Trump with a comment that instantly set off a political firestorm.

The controversy exploded after a clip circulated across social media showing a woman appearing to dismiss the shooting as possibly fake before making a chilling follow-up remark: “aww, they missed.” Within hours, backlash poured in from across the political spectrum, with critics demanding consequences and accusing the speaker of trivializing political violence at one of the most combustible moments in recent American history.

By Tuesday morning, UnitedHealth Group confirmed the employee was no longer with the company.

“Violence is never acceptable and any comments that suggest otherwise are in no way consistent with our mission and values,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to Newsweek. “The person who made comments online about Saturday night’s incident at a Washington event where President Trump and many other political leaders were gathered is no longer employed by the company.”

The company did not publicly identify the worker, but social media users quickly alleged the woman in the video was Alison King, who was said to be connected to UnitedHealthcare. Newsweek reported that King, 29, responded by text with a brief message: “I have no comment.”

The uproar has now dragged America’s largest health insurer into another explosive national conversation about violence, outrage, and the toxic culture of online political discourse. That is especially striking given the company’s own traumatic recent history. In December 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down on a New York City street in a killing that stunned the business world and horrified much of the country. But even that murder became distorted online, where some users openly celebrated the attack and turned the accused gunman, Luigi Mangione, into a symbol of anti-corporate anger.

Now, just over a year later, the company is once again facing public scrutiny tied to political violence, only this time because of remarks made by someone associated with its own brand.

In the now-viral video, the woman is heard saying, “You know we’re cooked as a country when my first reaction to hearing the news about Trump’s assassination attempt was—it was probably fake—I was like, ‘oh, that wasn’t real,’ probably fake. And the second was ‘aww, they missed?’ So happy they missed. Oh, yeah. That’s sad. That’s when you know we’re cooked.”

The video was shared widely by high-profile conservative accounts, including Libs of TikTok, helping fuel a wave of outrage that quickly reached prominent Republican figures. Utah Sen. Mike Lee was among those who amplified the clip, publicly pressing UnitedHealthcare to respond.

“I’d love to hear how United Health Care plans to respond to the company’s social media manager mourning the fact that President Trump survived Saturday’s assassination attempt,” Lee wrote on X.

Other users also seized on the bitter irony of the situation, pointing back to the company’s own tragedy in 2024.

“This violent rhetoric is dangerous and has no place in a civil society,” one user wrote.

Others posted variations of the same stunned reaction, asking whether this was the same company whose CEO had been assassinated in broad daylight.

According to screenshots and online accounts cited in the report, King was believed to be based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and had allegedly worked as a social media manager at UnitedHealthcare since July 2025. The same material suggested she previously held roles at Optum and at Skol Marketing, a Minneapolis digital agency.

Skol Marketing moved quickly to distance itself from the controversy, saying King had not worked there in five years.

“We have no association with her and do not condone violence in any form,” the company said.

An online search also reportedly showed a LinkedIn profile for an Alison King connected to UnitedHealthcare, though the page was no longer accessible by early Tuesday.

The bigger story here is not just about one viral comment or one firing. It is about how numb, performative, and openly cruel parts of America’s political culture have become. At a time when assassination attempts, mass shootings, and threats against public figures are no longer unthinkable, casual remarks celebrating violence are not edgy or funny. They are a warning sign of just how broken the national climate has become.

For Democrats and progressives trying to draw a sharp contrast with the politics of chaos and extremism, this kind of rhetoric is especially damaging. Condemning political violence cannot come with caveats. It cannot depend on who the target is. Once people start shrugging at assassination attempts or joking that the gunman should have had better aim, the country slides even deeper into the kind of moral collapse that too many Americans already fear is underway.