“Aww, They Missed?”
UnitedHealthcare fired her the same day.

Fifteen months of context. She missed all of it.

The sequence from the murder of UHC’s own CEO through the WHCD attack to King’s termination spans roughly fifteen months. Each event is documented in federal court filings, Department of Justice press releases, and contemporaneous news coverage.

April 26: the attempt. April 28: the TikTok. April 28: fired.

On the night of April 26, 2026, Secret Service agents assigned to the Washington Hilton were protecting President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner when Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, rushed the security checkpoint on the Terrace Level carrying a long gun. He ran through the magnetometer. A Secret Service officer was shot once in the chest — a ballistic vest absorbed the round. The officer drew his service weapon and fired multiple times. Allen was struck and fell. Trump was not harmed. Allen was charged two days later with three federal counts, including attempting to assassinate the president of the United States.

On April 28 — two days after the attack, while the charges were still fresh — Alison King, a social media manager at UnitedHealthcare, recorded a TikTok video. In it she described hearing the news of the attempt and said her first reaction was: “It was probably fake.” She then added: “Aww, they missed?” The video was later deleted, but not before it was captured, shared by the “Libs of TikTok” account on X, and reported by Fox News Digital, Newsweek, The Hill, the Washington Examiner, and the Daily Wire within hours.

“Aww, they missed? We're cooked as a country when my first reaction was, 'It was probably fake.'”

Alison King — TikTok video, April 28, 2026 — social media manager, UnitedHealthcare (since July 2025)

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called out UnitedHealthcare on X that afternoon, demanding a response. UHC issued a statement to Fox News Digital the same evening: “Violence is never acceptable and any comments that suggest otherwise are in no way consistent with our mission and values. The person who made comments online about Saturday night’s incident at a Washington event where President Trump and many other political leaders were gathered is no longer employed by the company.”

King was reached by Newsweek for comment. Her response: “I have no comment.”

Her CEO was murdered fifteen months earlier. She managed to miss the point entirely.

On December 4, 2024, Brian Thompson — CEO of UnitedHealthcare — was shot and killed outside the New York Hilton Midtown in Midtown Manhattan, where he was scheduled to speak at an investor conference. He was shot once in the back and once in the leg by a gunman armed with a 3D-printed ghost gun fitted with a suppressor. He was 50 years old. The words “delay,” “deny,” and “depose” were inscribed on the cartridge cases left at the scene.

The murder became one of the most widely covered crimes of 2024. Luigi Mangione, 26 — described by prosecutors as having anti-insurance-industry motivations — was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania five days after the shooting. He faces eleven New York state charges and four federal charges, including first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism. Federal prosecutors under Attorney General Pam Bondi are seeking the death penalty.

UnitedHealthcare was, as of April 2026, still living with that murder. The Mangione federal case was pending. The company’s leadership, employees, and communications staff had spent fifteen months navigating the public aftermath of their CEO being shot dead at a hotel. The company’s social media team — including Alison King — had been hired into that environment.

None of that context is subtle. A UnitedHealthcare employee celebrating a failed assassination attempt at a hotel — by an individual who ran through security with a long gun and shot a Secret Service agent — while the trial of the man who murdered her company’s CEO was still pending in federal court, was not a routine social media miscalculation. It was a spectacular failure of situational awareness that UHC evidently could not leave on the table for even one news cycle.

“Fifteen months ago our CEO was murdered in NYC. You managed to miss the point entirely.”

UnitedHealthcare — widely attributed HR characterization, April 28, 2026

April 26, 2026. Washington Hilton. He called himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin.”

At approximately 8:40 p.m. on April 26, 2026, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, approached the security checkpoint on the Terrace Level of the Washington Hilton — the same hotel where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was underway with President Trump in attendance. Allen ran through the magnetometer holding a long gun. A U.S. Secret Service officer assigned to the checkpoint heard a gunshot. The officer, wearing a ballistic vest, was shot once in the chest. He survived. The officer drew his service weapon and fired at Allen, who fell to the ground and was taken into custody with minor injuries.

Before the attack, Allen had sent an email to family members and a former employer explaining what he was about to do. He signed the email: “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen.” Allen had earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Caltech in 2017 and a master’s in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills, in 2025. He had been working as an educator in Torrance, California. NBC News and investigators documented that Allen had written of targeting Trump administration officials.

On April 27, the Department of Justice charged Allen with three federal counts: attempting to assassinate the President of the United States, using a firearm during a crime of violence, and transporting a firearm in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony. He faces life in federal prison.

When hate for Trump becomes a full-time job. And gets you fired from yours.

Trump Derangement Syndrome has a clinical presentation: an otherwise functional adult loses ordinary judgment the moment the subject of Donald Trump arises. King was, by all appearances, a working professional in a communications role at a major corporation. She had been at UHC for less than a year. She was aware — she had to have been aware, given her role — that her employer’s CEO had been murdered by a gunman outside a Manhattan hotel. And yet, when a gunman attempted to assassinate the sitting president of the United States, her documented, publicly broadcast response was: “Aww, they missed?”

There is a federal law that bears noting here. Title 18 U.S. Code § 871 prohibits knowingly and willfully making threats to take the life of, kidnap, or inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States. Violations carry up to five years in federal prison. The legal threshold requires a “true threat” — not mere hyperbole — and courts have required proof of at least recklessness since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Counterman v. Colorado(2023). Whether “Aww, they missed?” crosses the § 871 threshold is a legal judgment King may still face. UHC did not wait for that determination.

The First Amendment protects most speech from government prosecution. It does not protect employees from employer consequences. UnitedHealthcare is a private company. It does not have to employ someone who publicly expressed satisfaction at a failed presidential assassination. It did not. The firing was lawful in every state where employment is at-will, which is most of them. This is how the system is supposed to work.

Companies can and do fire employees for this. UHC did it inside of one news cycle.

UnitedHealthcare is not the first major employer to terminate an employee for expressing enthusiasm about political violence. Employers routinely monitor social media for content that could expose the company to reputational risk or legal liability. A social media manager — whose entire job involves managing a brand’s online presence — posting content that celebrates a failed presidential assassination attempt is not a gray area for most corporate HR departments. It is a textbook same-day termination.

The speed of the UHC response — same-day firing, same-day public statement to Fox News Digital, coordinated with Senator Lee’s public pressure on X — suggests the company understood both the severity of the content and the reputational exposure. Given that UHC’s own CEO was murdered by a gunman fifteen months earlier, the company had an additional layer of institutional sensitivity that made the calculus even clearer.

What makes this case a diagnostic TDS episode rather than merely a workplace discipline story is the context King was working in. She joined UnitedHealthcare in July 2025 — seven months after Brian Thompson’s murder. The Mangione case was actively in the news. The company’s brand had been at the center of a national conversation about executive safety and political violence. She was in a social media role. She posted publicly, under her real name, celebrating an assassination attempt.

The bottom line from UHC’s statement is the cleanest summary available: “Violence is never acceptable and any comments that suggest otherwise are in no way consistent with our mission and values.” They did not elaborate. They did not need to.