Alison King #
Introduction #
Alison King is a Minnesota social media professional who was reportedly fired from UnitedHealthcare in April 2026 after a TikTok video, attributed to her by social media users, sarcastically reacted to the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner by saying “Aww, they missed?” UnitedHealthcare — the company whose CEO, Brian Thompson, had been gunned down on a Manhattan street sixteen months earlier — announced the next day that the person behind the comments was “no longer employed by the company,” though it did not name her; the identification of the woman in the clip as King came from social-media users, screenshots of her accounts, and amplification by prominent figures including Senator Mike Lee. King, 29, told Newsweek in a text message, “I have no comment.”
Background Information #
According to screenshots of her social media activity reported by Newsweek, King is from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and had worked as a social media manager at UnitedHealthcare since July 2025, with previous roles as a social media specialist at the healthcare company Optum and as a creative content and social media coordinator at Skol Marketing, a Minneapolis digital agency. Skol Marketing said in a statement that King had not worked with the company in five years, adding, “We have no association with her and do not condone violence in any form.” An online search showed a LinkedIn profile associated with UnitedHealthcare under her name, but the page could not be accessed by early Tuesday as the storm broke — Fox reported she had reportedly deleted her account. The company she worked for carried its own recent history of political violence: Thompson was shot dead on December 4, 2024, and in the aftermath some corners of social media had celebrated the killing and elevated the accused gunman, Luigi Mangione, to hero status.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #
On the night of Saturday, April 25, 2026, a gunman later identified as Cole Tomas Allen opened fire at the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, which Trump was attending for the first time as president; Allen was arrested at the scene and, per law-enforcement sources cited by Fox News Digital, had wanted to target Trump administration officials. A TikTok video circulating that weekend showed a woman reacting to the news: “You know we’re cooked as a country when my first reaction to hearing the news about Trump’s [assassination] attempt was—it was probably fake,” she said, adding, “And the second was ‘aww, they missed? So happy they missed.’ Oh, yeah. That’s sad. That’s when you know we’re cooked.” The video was shared widely, including by the influential “Libs of TikTok” account on X, and social media users alleged the woman in the clip was King, a UnitedHealthcare social media manager. Utah Senator Mike Lee shared the clip and wrote: “I’d love to hear how United Health Care plans to respond to the company’s social media manager mourning the fact that President Trump survived Saturday’s assassination attempt.” Posts on the platform called for the employee to be fired, with several users invoking Thompson’s murder. The apparent original TikTok account was inaccessible by early Tuesday morning.
Public Reaction and Consequences #
On Tuesday, April 28, 2026, a UnitedHealth Group spokesperson told Fox News Digital and Newsweek: “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.” The company did not identify the person in its statement, and King’s identification rested on the social-media attribution chain; Newsweek framed it as users having “alleged” the woman in the clip was King, while Fox described her as “identified as a social media manager for UnitedHealthcare” who had reportedly deleted her LinkedIn. Newsweek observed that the firing risked thrusting America’s largest health insurer into the national political-violence debate “for the second time,” sixteen months after Thompson’s murder. Fox noted that King declined to comment when reached; her only response to Newsweek was “I have no comment.” The case landed alongside other April 2026 firings over the same shooting, including an Ohio teacher fired after a video appearing to lament Trump surviving the dinner attack.
Current Status #
As of the last available reporting, King was no longer employed by UnitedHealthcare, had deleted her LinkedIn presence, and had issued no public statement beyond “I have no comment.” No lawsuit or legal action connected to the firing was reported in the coverage reviewed. The company’s statement remains the only official record — it confirmed an employee was fired over the comments without confirming the employee’s identity — leaving King’s identification to the aggregation of screenshots, prior employers’ statements, and the X account that first attached her name to the clip. The suspected shooter in the underlying attack, Cole Tomas Allen, was reported by Fox to be facing life in prison, with proceedings continuing separately.
Impact on Their Career/Life #
King lost a corporate role she had held for less than a year, roughly seventy-two hours after the video was recorded, and her broader digital-marketing career now carries the reputational weight of a viral clip that a sitting senator and mass-reach accounts shared with her name attached. Her former agency moved within hours to sever its association, stating it had no relationship with her and “do[es] not condone violence in any form” — a marker of how quickly the blast radius extended past UnitedHealthcare. The episode also illustrates the speed and asymmetry of modern cancel storms: identification by crowd, amplification by a sitting senator, termination by the following business day, all before the subject issued a word in her own defense. For UnitedHealthcare, the firing was damage control at the intersection of its own trauma — a murdered CEO — and the country’s roiling politics of political violence; for King, it was the end of a healthcare-industry social media career that had barely begun.