12-10-24 Morning Rush - Luigi Mangione Charged With Murder - Full Updates & US Businessman May Buy Tiktok

Listen to twice daily pop culture episodes of The Rush Hour podcast with Dave Neal here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rush-hour-with-dave-neal/id1651903715

Welcome to the rush hour, your daily dose of pop culture for your rush hour ride. Buckle up and enjoy the drive with your host, stand up comedian, Dave Neal. Hey, good morning, everybody. It's Tuesday, December 10th, 2024. And we've got all of your news here in one place. On this episode, we'll discuss Luigi Mangione, the man who has now been charged with murder in the healthcare CEO's death.

There is a lot to cover in this wild case, which inevitably will lead to an absolute circus in New York city. I think we'll be covering this for a long time. Plus the Aussie comedian whose Rayon musical, that's the break dancer, was next by lawyers. Speaks out, I'll share what she has to say and let's meet the U S businessmen trying to buy and essentially save tick tock and we'll also break down baseball's biggest payday.

Juan Soto agrees to a 765 million contract with the New York Mets. I got all those stories and more coming up next on the rush. Well, let's start this morning episode out with some of the, uh, I should say less heavy material because we are going to be covering this assassin in this wild story. But first, here's an update to a story we first caught yesterday.

Comedian in Australia, Steph Broadbridge, uh, had a musical, uh, dedicated to Ray Gunn, the, uh, break dancer. I guess that went viral because she was a really bad break dancer at the Olympics. Here's what, uh, the comedian Steph had to say. This was supposed to be me, um, trying to make you feel like the icon that I believe that you can be in Australia.

Do you have a message for her if she's watching? Yeah, if you're watching, I just want to say I'm really sorry for all the, any negatives. Any negativity that you might have received as a result of this, I can promise you that was not my intention. This was supposed to be me, um, trying to make you feel like the icon that I believe that you can be in Australia.

And I just wanted to support you through it. So if there's been any negativity, it. Now listen, if you're Ray Gunn here, yeah, you don't want to nix the project. You know, just have her do a dress rehearsal for ya. If it's a good project, maybe license your image out, show up for a meet and greet, sell some merch, you know what I mean?

Like, make something out of yourself, Ray Gunn. And by the way, I'm telling you right now, you guys know this about me, I love Australian. I just love the city. Sound of Australians. So if the news is a little too heavy for you, uh, just start watching the Australian news. You know, no, does anything going on over there matter to us?

Probably not, but I'm telling you, it just, it just hits better. All right. Into our next story. Tick tock. Talk was, I guess it was decided this week by, was it the Supreme court that they have to go, uh, that, um, that they, that, well, and again, I don't know if, you know, don't trust me. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not, I'm no legal expert here, folks.

I don't know if you knew that about me. Uh, but, uh, the, you know, there's been these threats that tick tocks going to get removed for years now, um, as in a security risk and whatnot, unless it is sold to an American company. So now we have Frank McCourt, a business executive who's seeking to buy TikTok.

We're working very, very hard to be in a position to buy the U. S. Portion of tick tock. So it's not shut down. So what is, by the way, I love his subtle Boston accent, the U. S. Version of tick tock. So it's not shut down. If we buy it, we're going to stream all the games, all the Fenway park Red Sox games. Uh, you can get a Sam summer.

You're not going to be able to park your car anywhere, but you can take the TN. You can watch tick tock as you take the TN. Is that worth to you? There are estimates. It could be as high as It's 200 billion and worth 200 billion would be more, more, um, in the range of what the entirety of the platform is worth.

Not just the US piece. And let's be clear. The Chinese government has said they're not selling the algorithm. They view that as. IP of the country. So U. S. TikTok is a piece of ByteDance. If it's sold, it will be sold without an algorithm. So the value will be far, far less than 200, uh, 200 billion. We have circled over 20 billion to be in a position, and we're very serious about raising whatever capital is required to buy the platform.

And, and to be clear, We're looking to move the 170 million users over to a new protocol where the individuals will own and control their identity and their data. We're not looking to replicate the existing version. Well, look. You know, I could have been listening to what he was saying, but instead I Googled him and on Wikipedia, it says he's from Boston mass.

So look, I mean, I guess I was right there. I'm just, uh, I got a good ear for this type of stuff. I know a muscle when I hear one. Uh, so yeah, we'll have to see. I mean, what's the going rate for Tik TOK? You know what I mean? Who knows? Who knows? But, uh, I, you know, uh, people have said, Hey, Mark Cuban should buy a Tik TOK since, uh, Elon Musk wanted to buy, uh, uh, Twitter and did of course.

And by the way, did you see this? I'm not even, I'm just so dumb. I'm so exhausted by these stories, but you see that Elon Musk spent 250 million on the election. Isn't that crazy? Uh, president Musk. I mean, he's the first president that's not from the United States. I'm kidding, kind of, but you know, what does that money get you?

What's the access? You know, what kind of meal plan do you get at the white house? All right. Our next story, uh, it's a lot of money, but it ain't a billion bucks. Baseball outfielder Juan Soto is, uh, I guess he's going to be picking up the tab for a little bit. Baseball superstar Juan Soto has agreed to terms with the New York Mets on a 15 year contract worth 765 million.

That is the largest contract in professional sports history. Soto spent last season with the Yankees, hitting 41 home runs, helping lead the Yanks to the World Series. He's 26 years old, from the Dominican Republic, considered the number one player. Target and the free agent market. I mean, Hey, there it is.

That's a lot of money that breaks down to 50 million a year. And if he plays every regular season baseball game, that's about 300, 000 a game. And if he plays every inning, that's about 35, 000 per inning. Not bad. But I got to tell you after the first couple of years, you know, you see your bank account, it's got 30 million in it.

50, 80, a hundred million. You probably get bored right now. I know that's hard for us. Uh, plebeians to understand, but at some point you probably, I mean, the money's just, you know, monopoly money. Right. And speaking of monopoly money, we'll get into that in a second. We'll cover the, uh, assassin who's being charged with murder.

That'll be our kind of featured longer story, but we have a couple more, uh, I guess, smaller stories to cover. This is an interesting one. The days of the green bubble users disrupting the iMessage group chats are limited. What does that mean? Well, let's listen to the Elvis Duran show. Break it down guys.

The discrimination is ending Apple's latest iOS update out this week. We'll end the green bubbles on iPhones. We know that the green bubbles indicate messages sent via SMS, which lacks the end to end encryption of Apple's iMessage service. Those messages are shown in blue bubbles. There's been a war between the green and the blue people for quite some time.

Now you're not going to see which color the green people are. It'll all show up the same. More secure message options are taking hold in the update after an FBI warning about the vulnerabilities of SMS. Look, I don't want to throw any green message people out there under the bus. I don't want you to lose me, but you know, it is kind of funny how, how dug it dug in the sand we are.

You know, I considered getting a, an Android phone just to, just to see what the, uh, the thing was all about. But it's like, you know, it's like, okay, I'm 39. I've made my decision. I do iPhone. Oh, but the Android cameras are better at this point. It doesn't matter. They got me by the balls. I'm not going to, you know, they got my iCloud password.

They got me up charged. For the warranties. I just, I'm done. I'm moving on. You know what I mean? Uh, anyway, speaking of moving on, uh, let's do this. Let's reset, take a quick break and we'll be back with all of the updates on Louie, Luigi Mangione coming up next. Well, one of the things that I think makes this podcast successful, if I may, is you got to talk about the important news, the stuff that everyone's talking about.

This is, this, this podcast is really here to equip you for the water cooler. Get all your news. We're going to put it all in one place, but the news cycle right now is absolutely driven by this insane weather. Murder last week of the healthcare CEO. And again, there was a manhunt going on, uh, scuba divers in central park ponds, wondering, you know, what kind of, you know, was this a paid assassin?

So many questions were answered and we still have a very little knowledge, but there's more today than there was yesterday. And, uh, they found who they believe is the. The killer, uh, United healthcare CEO murderer, uh, again, allegedly who they believe it could be Luigi Mangione charged with murder in Thompson's death.

He's officially been charged with the murder. Um, TMZ confirmed according to court documents obtained by TMZ, Mangione was hit with the charges late Monday for allegedly gunning down the healthcare CEO last week in midtown Manhattan. Mangione now faces a slew of charges in New York, including murder, two counts of possession of a loaded firearm.

Possession of a forged instrument and criminal possession of a weapon. Charges come hours after Mangione appeared in a Pennsylvania court for weapons and forgery offenses. So we'll get into and kind of break this all down on how the heck they found him. There are so many conspiracy theories happening right now regarding him.

One of which has made it to the mainstream news, which we'll get to in a second, but let's first go to the law enforcement officials speaking at a press conference regarding the matter. Say they do ex. Luigi Mancione will be charged for the murder of Brian Thompson in New York. He was tracked here, thanks to a heads up employee at a local McDonald's.

And when he was there and police approached, He initially, according to the charging documents, presented a fake New Jersey ID. We actually have a picture of it that we obtained here at ABC News. And that ID was given to the police officers who really reminded him, according to the charging document, that lying about your identity could be grounds for arrest.

And when the officer probed further Asking, have you ever been to New York City? That's when they said Mangione had a physical reaction. He started shaking, the charging document said. And that's when police here became confident they had the person that New York City police had been looking for for the last six days, Lindsay.

And Aaron, as you well know, this case certainly got a lot of public interest and many controversial comments on social media. Governor Shapiro felt that it was important to address that multiple times tonight. I thought that was one of the more striking, uh, things that, that the governor said, where, where he, he fully recognized the frustration that many Americans have.

All right. So I'm actually going to share what the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro had to say, we'll get to that story in a minute. But first, one of the more bizarre aspects of the case in which will lead conspiracy theorists to run rampant is what a court reporter had to say for CNN. They were there at the initial arraignment of, um, uh, Luigi.

And, you know, I guess he claims that there were was cash planted on him. This is very interesting. Have a listen. An hour ago, I was there inside that courthouse watching as Luigi Mangione walked right past myself and a number of other reporters. He was wearing a blue shirt, blue jeans. He was, of course, handcuffed.

And he looked even in this court appearance visibly distressed, but he kept his brow furrowed through the duration of this, uh, arraignment hearing. He also said that he's worked for 30 years. three years as a data engineer up until about a year ago. And he also told the judge that he has no drug or mental health problems that the court needs to know about.

But Aaron, one of the most interesting parts of that particular hearing was actually his statements after the conversation about bail, the prosecutors basically stepped up there and made the case why they believe that this man should be held without bail. They mentioned that he is. Uh, awaiting potentially an arrest warrant coming from New York City is one of the major reasons.

But they also said that prosecutors, uh, noted that they found him with 8, 000 in U. S. cash, 2, 000 in foreign currency, his passport, and also a Faraday bag, which is basically a bag designed to stop, uh, transmission of cell, uh, service or other sort of, uh, things like that. At the end of his speech, the prosecutor's speech, uh, Luigi Mangione said, I actually want to address two of the things that you said.

He said, I don't know where that money came from. I'm not sure if it was planted. And then he also said that that bag was waterproof. And the term that the prosecutors used when discussing the Faraday bag, the ghost guns, the 3d printed silencer was the prosecutors used a phrase saying this is criminal sophistication.

Luigi Mangione said, I don't know about any of this criminal sophistication when addressing that. You know, what's interesting is he doesn't have a lawyer yet. I guess he'll either get a court appointed one or he'll get his own attorney, but this is going to be fascinating. I mean, if he does go to, I mean, he will go to trial in New York city and will a jury turn a blind eye to what he did now, because, and I, and I say that because as crazy as this is, if this is the killer, you know, I think what is shocking, uh, is that, uh, political analysts, whether on the left or the right are surprised at the response by Americans.

And I think this just goes to show that we have more in common than we have, uh, the, uh, the, the, the, we have, uh, you know, disagreements about, and one of which is the state of the healthcare in our country is bat shit crazy. Crazy. I mean, we pay the most and get the least for any first world country.

That's just a fact. Anyone who's had to deal with the six figure, um, debt to this, I mean, or, you know, even crazy medical debt that you have just because you broke your ankle or you had some, some hard fortune fall on you, it is absolutely rich. Finding out that some people. Uh, you know, I guess are saying, Hey, there's no place in society for this.

It's like, no, I understand. There's no place in society for someone to just murder somebody else, you know, out in public like that. Absolutely. But the fact that it happened goes to show that there is a bigger issue at play here, which is people are fed up. Here's what Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro had to say about Louis, uh, Luigi Mangione, not being a hero.

But some attention in this case, especially online, has been deeply disturbed, as some have looked to celebrate instead of condemning this killer. Brian Thompson was a father to two. He was a husband, and he was a friend to many. And yes, he was the CEO of the company. of a health insurance company in America.

We do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint. I understand people have real frustration with our health care system, and I have worked to address that throughout my career. So you can understand why people aren't accepting of what the governor saying here.

You have the governor, you have senators, congressmen, they get health insurance provided to them by the people in this elected, uh, capacity, you know, but so many people with their private insurance or lack thereof, uh, watch, watch family members suffer. And they, and they watch, you know, they watch the system not work for them.

And to be quite honest with knowing how Close we are to our family and how, how, you know, the bond that we all have. If you take away our health, what do we have left is the question. So when you look at someone who Josh Shapiro says, Hey, he's a father, he's a husband. Sure. Aren't all the people that died because they didn't get medical treatment.

Aren't they all worth something? Aren't they all a dad, a mom, someone's grandmother, someone's, you know, someone's baby. I mean, these, the, you know, the, the. It's an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. I understand that, but which political leaders will say the right thing that rallies people together?

You might, I know it's going to be a long time before the next presidential race, but finding someone who can speak for the populace, uh, these, these are the times when I think. Somebody will rise up, but I don't see it being Josh Shapiro right here saying this guy's no hero. Look, look, I get it. Yeah, we have laws, uh, but it's, you know, the system's not working.

It hasn't worked. It's gridlocked, and it's been a long time, and it's a long way from working. They can't even vote on health care. So we know who to vote out. You know what I mean? You know, they did this thing a few years ago, forced to vote where they try to get everyone to vote. To try to get some form of universal healthcare and they wouldn't even vote on it.

They're not even voting. They're not even doing their damn job. Uh, and again, you could, you could place blame on whatever side you want, but this is an issue that has rallied people on the left and the right. It is literally a, such a shock that in the end of 2024, after the most divisive election of our lifetimes, we have something uniting people, which is across the board.

People are saying enough is enough on this crazy system we've put up with for way too long. Is this a vigilante? Uh, we've got under the desk news explaining what a possible motive might be. Police are alleging that this fella here, Luigi Mangione, is the man who shot and killed the UnitedHealthcare CEO in New York City.

And Luigi comes from a family who made their riches in the healthcare industry. Yes, while you were thirsting over his Instagram photos, I was here in his LinkedIn trying to see if he had ever worked in healthcare. And he did. He volunteered for this group called Lorian Health Services. Lorian was founded by his grandpa, Nicholas Mangione, and very recently, his cousin, John Mangione Jr.

was named the vice president. Lorian Health Systems seem to run what are very highly rated nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and home health services. So what does that have to do with UnitedHealthcare? Over the last several years, UnitedHealth has been buying up all the family owned, end of life care facilities they can possibly get their hands on.

And we know when a big company buys out a family owned business, the quality does not improve. And by creating a monopoly for end of life care, they continue to out price their competitors, putting family owned businesses out of business. In fact, in the state of Maryland, where Laurian Health was, the Department of Justice was suing UnitedHealthcare for antitrust violations, claiming that they were already too close to buying up all of the end of life care in that state, and that their actions were having a negative impact on vulnerable patients and staff.

Now, we are going to find out more from this person as to what their motive was. This is just the fact finding I have done so far to build this story. And again, that was under the desk news on Tic Tac. They do fantastic work here. So, you know, what's, what is the motivation behind the crimes yet to be seen?

Um, and again, be careful times like these when you're sharing, uh, you know, news, uh, just know, you know, know to do your critical thinking. And there's going to be a lot of fake news. There's going to be a lot of. Uh, people, you know, there was a YouTube channel claiming to be his and you know, it's a wild time out there, but, um, it's going to be a, it's probably gonna be a long process gaining all of this information.

I just hope that, uh, a proper discussion is had with regard to how dire the situation is and you know, changes are made. We'll be back with more content right after this. An ex FBI profiler was on TMZ explaining the loads of sloppy mistakes that would have been made by Luigi if this is, in fact, the guy.

Here's what he had to say. Um, still had, in addition to them having the manifesto, but still had the gun with him. Um, honestly, as I was listening to all the details over the weekend, I assumed that gun had been stashed, thrown somewhere in Central Park. Right. In the water. Little needle in the haystack or in one of the lakes there.

And that but what do you make of the fact that he still had it with him? Yeah, and I said early on this killer was mission oriented. He wanted to accomplish this task Now being mission oriented at the same time doesn't mean you're necessarily criminally sophisticated and um, this guy was more lucky than anything in terms of his egress from From midtown manhattan and eventually out of uh out of the city To Altona, Altoona.

I heard he may have been to Atlanta and back. I'm not sure where that part fits in. But, uh, yeah, he may be a bright guy. Apparently he's Ivy League educated, but when it came to committing a crime like this, he made some sloppy mistakes. We're still waiting to see if the DNA come back from the bottle or the phone, anything else they found were the shell casings.

But, uh, but, uh, obviously with the, with showing his face like that, and quite frankly, the McDonald's today. You can't eat through a mask, even the best of the COVID mask. You still had to pull them down and, uh, and to put the food in your mouth. Someone sitting across from him saw his full face and said, Hey, I recognize him from somewhere.

And sure enough, they called the police. Mike, my big question was why was he. Adam McDonald's. But then you go to think he probably took a bus out of the city. So is he, is he literally in the cold? You know, I don't know. There's so many questions we don't have answered, but as far as people that are actually having a, uh, a real conversation about this, uh, look no further than comedian Bill Burr.

He, uh, had his guy Paul Verzi on, I guess, one of their podcasts. And he discussed like, Hey, you know, These people like this is the game, you know, it's, it's, this is the game that's played the amount of money that's exchanged the power in these companies, uh, bill burr. Again, this is reported goes there with jokes about gangster healthcare CEOs, uh, pardon this swearing, but here's a full clip for you.

Oh, what's going on in New York? We were just talking about it. That CEO got fucking whacked. Oh my God, dude. You know, it's funny. I was sitting there reading an article guy like, Oh my God, he's such a great guy. He had a, you know, wife and kids and he's such a great guy. And then you find out he and the other guys he's working for are getting sued for 121 million for dumping a stock.

And not letting the other people know. In the lawsuit, he and multiple other United Health executives are accused of offloading something like 15 million shares of stock. It's like, there's your motive. Nancy Pelosi just made 9 million bucks on some shit. Nancy Pelosi's stock trades saw a 65 percent return last year.

This comes as Congress has stalled talks on banning lawmakers from trading stocks. They're gangsters, dude. Fucking gangsters and then one of them gets whacked or something like, Oh, good. He was such a good guy. It's a dirty game, Paul, healthcare, healthcare, dirty game, dirty game. Indeed. And look, I mean, you know, uh, this is what, this is why Bill Barr is successful.

Okay. Because he, he, he can just state, state the obvious right there, you know, and, and, and, you know, you got Josh Shapiro saying, Hey, he's no hero. Sure. Whatever. But can we talk about the symptom here? Can we talk about the symptom of why this is happening? Um, I don't know if it'll get better before it gets worse.

Uh, but we'll be here to continue to share these stories. They're complicated, they're complex and feelings are complex. I mean, you won't catch me dancing on this guy's grave. I can walk and chew gum at the same time, right? I can feel bad for this guy's family. And I can also understand, boy, what a massive target you put on yourself when you're the head of a company that, uh, plays God.

That's really what it is playing God. All right. Well, anyway, Duff, you know, I understand some, this type of story isn't going to be for everybody, but it's, it's, it's, it's a big, it's a big day and there's gonna be a lot of data coming in regarding this, uh, you know, sort of end to this manhunt here. I'll tell you what though, it doesn't make me want to McDonald's anymore.

I mean, geez, McDonald's it's where people go to hang out when they're You know, in between needing to be somewhere else, uh, not a good advertisement for McDonald's. All right. Well, we'll have a couple of videos to get to in the bachelor world today. We'll be covering those on YouTube and also I'll be on Patreon, patreon.

com slash Dave Neal doing my private membership live stream. And yeah, we're just going to. We're, we're ticking the days down to Christmas and boy, I tell you what, 2024 not going without a fight. We'll be back this afternoon. I'm Dave Neal. This is the rush. The rush hour is a twice daily pop culture and entertainment news podcast hosted by standup comedian Dave Neal lives too short for a boring ride.

So join Dave as he covers the top news stories of the day. Don't be caught clueless at the water cooler. The rush hour with Dave Neal features all the viral TikToks and podcast clips you need to hear. Plus, feel good stories and some motivational stuff too. A perfect compliment for your commute. Featured in Time Magazine, Washington Post and Us Weekly.

Get your rush hour on today.