“Aww, they missed?” UnitedHealthcare fired her the same day.

On April 28, 2026 — three days after a self-described “Friendly Federal Assassin” opened fire on President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — Alison King, 29, a social media manager at UnitedHealthcare in Minneapolis, posted a TikTok video saying she was disappointed Trump had survived. UnitedHealthcare terminated her the same day. Fifteen months earlier, the company’s CEO had been murdered outside a Manhattan hotel. King’s colleagues noticed the irony. UnitedHealthcare noticed it faster.

April 28, 2026 — two thoughts, posted publicly, by a social media professional

Alison King, identified in reporting by Fox News Digital, the Daily Wire, and Newsweek as a social media manager at UnitedHealthcare who had been with the company since July 2025, posted a TikTok video on the morning of April 28, 2026, reacting to the previous Saturday’s assassination attempt on President Trump at the Washington Hilton. King had previously worked at Optum, UnitedHealth Group’s health services division, and at Skol Marketing, a Minneapolis-based digital agency.

In the video, King said: “You know we’re cooked as a country when my first reaction to hearing the news about Trump’s attempt was, ‘it was probably fake.’” She continued: “Aww, they missed? So happy they missed.” The video circulated rapidly on X. Utah Senator Mike Lee shared the clip directly, tagging UnitedHealthcare and asking how the company planned to respond.

King is a social media professional by trade. She posted this on social media. She deleted her LinkedIn account after the video went viral. She declined to comment when Fox News Digital reached out. Her employer did not decline to comment.

“Aww, they missed? So happy they missed.”

Alison King, TikTok video, April 28, 2026 — posted publicly; deleted after going viral

April 28, 2026 — termination announced the same day the clip went viral

UnitedHealthcare moved quickly. The same day King’s TikTok circulated on X — with Senator Mike Lee’s amplification forcing the question directly at the company — UnitedHealth Group issued a statement confirming the termination. The statement did not name King but made the situation unambiguous.

The Daily Wire reported that a senior UnitedHealth Group employee said company leadership was “appalled” by King’s remarks — a response shaped in part by the context: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson had been murdered outside the New York Hilton Midtown on December 4, 2024, shot by a gunman who ambushed him outside an investor conference. Thompson’s killer, Luigi Mangione, had been cheered on social media by people who framed the assassination as acceptable retaliation against the health insurance industry. The company had spent the intervening fifteen months navigating that backlash. King’s comments landed in that specific context at a company whose tolerance for violence-adjacent rhetoric was already at zero.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) separately cited the rhetoric of Democratic officials and media figures in connection with the climate that produced the WHCA Dinner shooting, stating that the left’s sustained messaging about Trump had contributed to radicalization.

December 4, 2024 — why those specific words, at that specific company, hit differently

Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed at 6:44 a.m. on December 4, 2024, outside the New York Hilton Midtown. He was ambushed by a gunman who had traveled from Maryland and waited for him outside an investor conference. He was 50 years old. He left behind a wife and two children.

In the days that followed, a significant portion of social media treated the murder as entertainment. Luigi Mangione, the suspect arrested in connection with the killing, became a folk hero in certain corners of the internet. UnitedHealthcare employees watched their CEO’s murder be cheered publicly while the company issued statements asking for respect for the Thompson family. Sixteen months later, an employee of that same company posted a video expressing disappointment that the president of the United States had survived an assassination attempt — at a company whose CEO had just been assassinated.

The Daily Wire’s reporting that leadership was specifically “appalled” reflects that the comment was not just a generic political statement — it was a social media manager at a company that had already lived through exactly what King was expressing enthusiasm for, expressing enthusiasm for it again.

“You know we're cooked as a country when my first reaction to hearing the news about Trump's attempt was, 'it was probably fake.'”

Alison King, TikTok, April 28, 2026 — posted at a company whose CEO was murdered in December 2024

Ohio teacher Corrine Baum fired the day before

King was not the only person to lose employment over similar comments in the days following the WHCA Dinner shooting. On April 27, 2026 — the day before King was fired — Corrine Baum, a teacher at BrightPath/The Children’s House in Cincinnati, Ohio, was terminated after posting a TikTok video that was interpreted as expressing disappointment that the assassination attempt had failed. In the video, Baum said: “Man, there’s been a few creators on here saying that like Friday or yesterday could have been the day and then I wake up to that news, but not thatnews.” Libs of TikTok initially surfaced the post; Fox News subsequently reported the termination.

The pattern is consistent with past assassination-adjacent incidents. After the July 13, 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania shooting — in which a bullet grazed Trump’s ear — multiple public figures and private individuals faced professional and institutional consequences for comments expressing regret that the shooter had missed. The WHCA Dinner incident produced a second wave of the same response within 72 hours.

The documented sequence, in order

A clinical summary

Alison King is a social media professional who posted a public video on social media expressing disappointment that the president had survived an assassination attempt. Her employer is a company whose CEO was murdered sixteen months earlier and whose institutional tolerance for violence-adjacent rhetoric was already documented at zero. She works in social media. She posted on social media. She got fired.

The phrase that circulated widely — “Aww, they missed?” — was not a nuanced political critique. It was not an expression of policy disagreement. It was an expression of disappointment that the president of the United States had not been killed. Posted publicly. By a social media manager. At a company that just buried its own CEO.

Greg Gutfeld observed that the WHCA Dinner shooting was distinctive in the taxonomy of Trump assassination attempts because it documented, for the first time, that you can be radicalized by liberal smugness alone: “This guy did hear voices. They were Ted Lieu’s, they were Brandon Johnson’s, they were CNN’s, they were The View.” King’s video exists in that same information environment. She was not the shooter. She was an employee who absorbed the ambient message and posted it under her own name.

She had no public statement after being fired. She deleted her LinkedIn. The TikTok came down. The job is gone. The documented record stands.

“Violence is never acceptable and any comments that suggest otherwise are in no way consistent with our mission and values.”

UnitedHealthcare statement, April 28, 2026 — announcing Alison King's termination