Taylor Lorenz, the disgraced 40-year-old journalist who lost her job at the Washington Post for calling President Joe Biden a war criminal and lying about it afterward, was banished from yet another prominent media outlet. Vox Media has ended its podcast deal with Lorenz, Semafor reported on Monday, days after the left-wing crank celebrated the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
"And people wonder why we want these [health care] executives dead," Lorenz wrote last week, hours after Thompson was fatally shot in Manhattan. She later clarified that she wasn't arguing "people should murder" health care executives, just that those executives deserved to "suffer and die" a horrible death. "When I say do I wish someone dead is that advocating for them to be killed? No, of course not," she explained, sort of. On Monday, Lorenz wrote on her User Mag website about how Thompson's still-unidentified killer "has become a national hero," based on interviews with "several people posting memes about the shooter over the weekend and one who made a TikTok glorifying him."
Vox Media announced its partnership with Lorenz in February, when she was still working for the Post and preparing to launch her new video podcast, "Power User." Axios described the deal as a "huge win" for Vox Media in its quest to become a "top destination for premiere talent." The initial arrangement was set to expire at the end of the year. According to Semafor, the company decided to cut ties with Lorenz before her comments last week celebrating the death of health care executives. If that's true, Vox executives must be feeling even better about parting ways with an unhinged radical.
Lorenz's ousting from the Post in October may have played a role in Vox's decision. A Post spokesperson claimed Lorenz had "resigned to pursue a career in independent journalism," but Puck's Dylan Byers reports that the paper "severed ties" with the journalist after determining she had "misled" them regarding her social media post denouncing Biden as a war criminal, then "graciously allowed" her to quit. Before joining the Post in 2022, Lorenz worked for the New York Times. She left amid reports that Times reporter Maggie Haberman had confronted Lorenz about her relentless coverage of Claudia Conway, the 15-year-old daughter of then-White House adviser Kellyanne Conway.
Since launching her "independent journalism" career, Lorenz has sought attention by posting increasingly radical opinions. Last month she doubled down by calling Biden a "war criminal who should never know peace." Days prior before Thompson was murdered, Lorenz denounced the vast majority of Americans who no longer wear face masks as "dumbf—s [who] are out raw dogging the air and spewing ur disease laden breath all over ur elderly neighbors."
Further reading: Taylor Lorenz Holds Breath To Survive 'Dangerous' Encounter With Unmasked Passengers at JFK Airport in 2023
Update: On Monday, after Thompson's shooter was reportedly apprehended and identified as Luigi Mangione, an Ivy League graduate who played soccer in high school, Lorenz started to review the suspect's social media posts and criticized him for promoting stories suggesting smart phones are bad for children.