NewsNation's Ashleigh Banfield Was Able to Interview Luigi Mangione's Fellow Inmates — Kind Of
"This is the strangest interview I've ever conducted."
Published Dec. 12 2024, 1:00 p.m. ET
By far one of the weirdest childhood games we play is telephone. Everyone sits in a circle while one person whispers a sentence into the ear of the individual next to them. This keeps going until it returns to the original messenger.
At that point, the sentence was always butchered in a hilarious way. This brings us to how Luigo Mangione's fellow inmates managed to let the media know that conditions at the prison sucked.
Luigi Mangione's fellow inmates say conditions sucked by way of a very odd interview.
NewsNation was camped outside of State Correctional Institution Huntingdon in Pennsylvania, where Mangione is being held. While they were unable to interview him, the outlet found a workaround. "Luigi's conditions suck," yelled one prisoner. "Free Luigi." screamed another. This is on Dec. 11, 2024, two days after Mangione was arrested and charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and spirits are unusually high for the other prisoners.
Several hours later, NewsNation correspondent Alex Caprariello smiled while standing by the prison. He too seemed vaguely amused by this new interview style. Earlier in the day, the inmates asked Caprariello to pass along a message to his co-worker: "Tell Ashleigh Banfield that Luigi is watching at 10 o'clock." Brushing that off, Caprariello said Mangione is most likely separated from the other inmates. In all likelihood, they are just enjoying the attention.
Banfield decided to play along by asking the inmates if they could hear her. "Does Luigi have a television in his single cell?" she asked. Caprariello turned back toward the prison and was met with a chorus of "No's!" Both Banfield and Caprariello laughed in response to this. "This is the strangest interview I've ever conducted," said Banfield. The Department of Corrections has stated that Mangione is not with the other inmates but is not in solitary confinement.
With one final pan over to the prison, the inmates went out with a semi-bang. They began flicking their lights on and off. Banfield and Caprariello seemed to be absolutely delighted by this. These actions from Mangione's inmates might contradict something Fox News's Jesse Watters said during an episode of The Five.
Regarding a possible prison sentence, Watters said, "This guy's not ready. He's way too soft. He's going to get annihilated on the inside." Watters went on to say that Mangione can't be sentenced to death but maybe "someone will do him justice behind bars." For now, that doesn't appear to be the case.