SNL’s “woke” studio audience erupted in applause at the mention of accused UnitedHealthcare assassin Luigi Mangione during a segment over the weekend, visibly shocking even cast member Colin Jost.
Mangione, 26, has attracted a following of unhinged fangirls since his Dec. 9 arrest, hundreds of whom have been writing him letters and making deposits into his jailhouse commissary account, correction officials have said.
During Saturday’s “Weekend Update” segment, Jost namedropped Mangione as he went into his wind-up for a joke, which instantly prompted raucous cheers from what sounded like mostly women.
Jost seemed to be surprised by the response, glancing offstage and awkwardly smiling while sarcastically quipping to the audience, “Yeah, definitely ‘woo,’ ” and rhetorically asking, “You’re ‘wooing’ for justice, right?”
Mangione was hit with new federal charges in New York last week — including first-degree murder — for allegedly gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Midtown Manhattan Hilton on Dec. 4.
The new charges mean the privileged Ivy League graduate — who has been adopted as something of a bizarro folk hero by the deranged, anti-capitalist left — could be eligible for the death penalty if convicted.
The cheers from the crowd of the long-running late-night sketch show drew swift condemnation from numerous pundits and journalists on X.
“These people are freaking SICK,” wrote independent journalist Nick Sortor.
Author Jennifer Sey, hitting out at what she perceives as hypocrisy, wrote, “The SNL audience must be the dumbest group of pathetic woke conformists known to man.
“Here they cheer for a silver spoon/trust funder murdering a stranger with some deranged Robin Hood ‘I’m a hero’ story. Audience is moronic. And evil.”
Journalist and New York Post columnist Piers Morgan called the moment “disgusting” and ripped Jost for his reaction.
“Colin Jost just smirks away as if it’s all one big giggle. Shameful moment for SNL,” Morgan wrote on X.
Anti-CEO sentiment has become trendy in left-wing activist circles after the public execution of the father of two, causing some corporations to take security measures such as scrubbing the names and likenesses of top executives from their websites or hiring security guards.
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