Luigi Mangione, suspected of shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was detained by police on Monday at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a customer recognized him from surveillance images.
Mangione, 26, was initially arrested for possession of an unlicensed firearm and other charges, but after a court appearance on Monday is now facing murder charges over Thompson’s death.
In an apparent jibe about Mangione’s arrest, social media users shared what looked like a post from McDonald’s rival Burger King, suggesting the latter restaurant chain would not have informed the police.
Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
The Claim
A post on X, formerly Twitter, on December 9, 2024 by user @MikeBeauvais included a screengrab of what appeared to be a repost from Burger King’s X account earlier the same day reading “We don’t snitch.”
Beauvais wrote alongside the purported screengrab: “Luigi Mangione shouldn’t have gone to McDonald’s.” His post had been viewed 5.9 million times at the time of writing.
It was reposted by multiple users on X. A post on Reddit, upvoted 545 times, posted on December 9, 2024, included the screengrab, adding: “Burger King is old school they understand the oath they took.”
Newsweek has contacted a media representative for Burger King via email for comment.
The Facts
This tweet is not real.
Not only has there been no wider reporting about this post—which would be likely if the post were real—but there are also no live or archived URLs to a genuine post by the Burger King account. It appears to have been created using an online fake screenshot generator.
The screengrab of the post does not look like a post from X. The font used for the date and time is smaller than in authentic posts. The screengrabs also refer to inter-user messaging and shares as “Retweets” and “Quote Tweets,” terms that X no longer uses.
Elon Musk changed the name of the site from Twitter to X in July 2023 after buying the company for a reported $46.5 billion. Verbs referring to activity on the site such as “tweets” and “tweeting” were also removed. The number of reposts and times a post is quoted is now listed only numerically, next to the icons for the corresponding interaction.
Newsweek was able to create a nearly exact copy of the screengrabbed image using a “Tweet Generator” website that can produce inauthentic posts.
Although Burger King does not appear to have publicly responded to the post, the lack of sophistication in the post’s creation, deliberate or otherwise, proves that it’s a fake.
New images released on Tuesday showed Mangione at the Altoona McDonald’s where he was taken into custody on Monday.
In the photos shared by Pennsylvania State Police’s social media on Tuesday, Mangione, 26, was shown having removed his blue face mask to eat a hash brown while leaning against the restaurant wall. The suspect was wearing a mustard-colored beanie and dark jacket in the image.
The Ruling
False.
Burger King did not post “We don’t snitch” after Luigi Mangione’s arrest. The screengrab of the post appears to have been created using an online “Tweet generator” designed to produce fake screenshots.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team
