1-star McDonald’s reviews and sympathetic merch: Companies try to stop online support for CEO killer

After police found the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” printed on shell casings near the site where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down, merchandise bearing those words started to appear online.

After police found the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” printed on shell casings near the site where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down, merchandise bearing those words started to appear online. The phrase might be linked to a 2010 book critiquing the health insurance industry titled, “Delay Deny Defend,” a common description of the industry’s tactics. Those words appeared on a number of items on Amazon’s store, including hats, T-shirts and pint glasses. The suspect in the case has garnered sympathy and online fandom partly because of people’s problems with the health insurance industry. The majority of insured US adults had at least one issue, including denial of claims, with their health insurance in the span of a year, according to a survey released in June 2023 by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research group. Amazon has pulled the merchandise from the website for violating the company’s rules, according to a person familiar with Amazon’s decision making. It’s unclear how many people bought items emblazoned with the phrase. However, “deny, defend, depose” merchandise remains on sale on eBay. The phrase itself doesn’t violate its rules, but “items that glorify or incite violence, including those that celebrate the recent murder of UHC CEO Brian Thompson, are prohibited,” a company spokesperson told CNN. Police on Monday arrested Luigi Mangione, the suspect in Thompson’s killing. A police official told CNN that Mangione possessed a handwritten document stating, “these parasites had it coming,” and expressing “ill will toward corporate America.”