We’ve all had that coworker who says something stupid at the office party. Maybe they trash-talk the boss within earshot, or reply-all to an email that should’ve stayed in drafts. But most of us have the basic survival instincts of a golden retriever — we know not to publicly celebrate an attempted assassination. Apparently, that bar was still too high for one healthcare company’s social media manager, who hopped online and told the world she was “sad the shooter missed” President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
She works in *healthcare*. Her literal job is adjacent to keeping people alive. And she went on social media — using her real name, connected to her employer — to express disappointment that a bullet didn’t find its target. You can’t make this stuff up. If irony were a medical condition, she’d be terminal.
The video went viral faster than a retirement scam email from a Nigerian prince. And her employer — to their credit — didn’t wait around for a focus group or a DEI committee review. They fired her. Swift. Clean. Done. The kind of decisive action we used to see from every American company before HR departments started running the world.
Now look, we believe in free speech around here. We really do. You can say whatever you want in this country — that’s what makes it the greatest nation on Earth. But free speech doesn’t mean free-from-consequences speech. It means the government can’t lock you up for being an idiot. Your employer? They can absolutely decide they don’t want “publicly wishes for presidential assassinations” on the company brand. That’s not censorship. That’s common sense.
And let’s talk about the specific flavor of unhinged we’re dealing with here. This wasn’t some private text to a friend that got leaked. This wasn’t a diary entry. This was a *social media manager* — someone whose entire professional skill set is supposed to be understanding what you should and shouldn’t post online — posting the single worst thing you could possibly post online. That’s like hiring a financial adviser who puts his life savings into scratch-off lottery tickets.
For those of you enjoying your retirement years, imagine this woman was managing communications for your healthcare provider. Imagine she’s the one writing the Facebook posts about your doctor’s office, your insurance company, your pharmacy. “We care about your health!” she types with one hand while tweeting “too bad they missed” with the other. Feel good about that? Yeah, neither does anyone else.
The left has spent the last decade telling us that words are violence. They’ve canceled people for decade-old tweets, for jokes taken out of context, for using the wrong pronouns in a faculty meeting. But when one of their own openly roots for a sitting president to be murdered? Suddenly it’s “she was just expressing her feelings” and “this is a free speech issue.” The hypocrisy isn’t even creative anymore. It’s just lazy.
Here’s what’s beautiful about this story, though — and I mean genuinely beautiful in a “the system works” kind of way. The company didn’t need a congressional hearing. They didn’t need a media pressure campaign that lasted six weeks. They saw what she said, they recognized it was monstrous, and they acted. That’s America functioning correctly. That’s the free market doing what the free market does. You produce value, you stay employed. You become a liability who publicly fantasizes about political assassination, you get shown the door.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It’s the most reliable rule in American life, and it never gets old watching people learn it in real time.
The video of the whole saga is bouncing around every corner of the internet right now, and it’s the kind of content that reminds you why normal Americans are winning the culture war even when it doesn’t feel like it. Because most people — left, right, center, don’t-care — watched that video and thought the same thing: “What is wrong with you?”
That’s the silent majority. That’s the overwhelming consensus of decent human beings who think wishing death on a president is disqualifying for polite society, let alone professional employment.
So to our retired readers who’ve been watching this country’s professional class lose its collective mind for the last few years — take heart. Sometimes the garbage takes itself out. And sometimes, unemployment is its own kind of healthcare. For the rest of us