When Utah Gov. Spencer Cox announced there was a suspect in custody for the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Friday, he delivered another message directly to young Americans.
"You are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage. It feels like rage is the only option," Cox said to a crowded room of reporters at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
Cox, a Republican, encouraged young people to "choose a different path," referencing a comment Kirk made before his death about how society has to get back to having "reasonable agreement where violence is not an option."
Watch Cox from Friday's press conference:
While Kirk was a highly divisive figure, with a history of inflammatory comments, Cox and others have applauded his willingness to engage those who disagreed with him.
"Your generation has an opportunity to build a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now. Not by pretending differences don't matter, but by embracing our differences and having those hard conversations," Cox continued.
The mantra of "disagreeing better" has morphed into Cox's brand as a politician. In 2023, Cox was named chair of the National Governors Association where his "Disagree Better" campaign attempted to amplify ways Americans could learn how to engage in "healthy conflict." The goal was to combat political polarization and participate in civil debate.
He tried to lead by example, partnering with Democratic Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado on the "Disagree Better" campaign. Cox routinely told local reporters that he believed democracy was "headed down a very dark path."
"It scares the hell out of me," Cox told Utah reporters during a 2023 press conference.
In a press conference the day Kirk was shot, Cox referenced a series of violent acts against U.S. politicians, including the murder of Melissa Hortman, the Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House; the firebombing of of the home of Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania; and two attempts to assassinate President Trump.
Threats toward elected officials have increased tenfold since Trump took office in 2016, according to data from the U.S. Capitol Police. Researcher Rachel Kleinfeld, whom Cox has cited before, found that violent political attacks have also sharply spiked since 2016, mostly by far-right believers.
When Cox was campaigning for Utah governor in the 2020 election cycle, he won some praise from both sides of the aisle for subtly distancing himself from Donald Trump. Cox never endorsed Trump directly in that cycle. The governor also said he didn't vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, stating he hasn't voted for a major party candidate since 2012.
But Cox endorsed Trump after the assassination attempt in 2024. Cox, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said he prayed about it and believed publicly backing Trump was the right thing to do.
"I'm doing everything I can to help and support him," Cox told local reporters at a 2024 press conference. "We'll still have lots of disagreements, I'm sure, and we'll still do everything we can to help the state of Utah and to help the Republican Party be successful."
Cox also wrote Trump a letter after the first failed assassination attempt last year, calling on him to act as a unifying force.
"Your life was spared. Now, because of that miracle, you have the opportunity to do something that no other person on earth can do right now: unify and save our country," Cox wrote. "I fear that America is on the precipice of an unmitigated disaster. We need to turn down the temperature and find ways to come together again before it's too late."
While Kirk wasn't an elected official, Cox has called his death a "political assassination" and said Utah would be seeking the death penalty against the person charged with Kirk's murder. At the end of his remarks on Friday morning, Cox returned to the bedrock of what he believes is wrong with America today.
"We will never be able to solve all the other problems, including the violence problems that people are worried about," he said, "if we can't have a clash of ideas safely and securely, especially those ideas with which you disagree."
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