Utah's governor, in impassioned remarks, urges Americans to find
'off-ramp' from political violence
[September 13, 2025]
By MICHELLE L. PRICE
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a week when Americans witnessed a public political
assassination, oceans of angry words and a collective sense of horror
and exhaustion, one man stepped up to a microphone and said something
that stood out: It doesn’t have to be like this.
That man, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, appeared weary, emotional, at times
angry and on the verge of tears Friday. While he had the country's
attention, he used the moment to ask his fellow Americans to turn down
the temperature.
Cox, long an advocate for civility, said he didn't “want to get too
preachy.” But he described the moment as one where the country's very
ideals were on the line. He made an impassioned plea for Americans and
young people in particular to use the horror of conservative activist
Charlie Kirk’s assassination as an inflection point to turn the country
away from political violence and division.
“This is our moment: Do we escalate or do we find an off-ramp?” Cox told
a news conference in Utah as he announced authorities had a suspect in
Kirk's killing in custody. “It's a choice.”
Throughout his political career, Cox, a two-term Republican governor,
has issued pleas for bipartisan cooperation and at times drawn national
attention for his empathetic remarks.
His speech on Friday was his most emotional and prominent example yet,
as he urged an appeal to common ground and humanity to forge a better
society. It was a marked departure from the bellicose rhetoric often
employed in recent years by U.S. politicians, especially President
Donald Trump, who is known for provocative language and has blamed
Kirk's killing on “radical left” rhetoric.
‘Politics feels like rage’
On Wednesday, after Kirk's killing, Cox made an initial plea. On Friday,
acknowledging he was running on only 90 minutes of sleep after days of
the manhunt for Kirk's killer and heated rhetoric unfurling online, he
went further.
His voice appearing to break at times, Cox said that the response to
violence and hate can be more violence and hate. “And that's the problem
with political violence,” he said. “It metastasizes because we can
always point the finger at the other side. And at some point, we have to
find an off-ramp, or it's going to get much, much worse.”
“History will dictate if this is a turning point for our country,” he
said. “But every single one of us gets to choose right now if this is a
turning point for us.”
The 50-year-old governor, who has four children who are teenagers and
young adults, directed some of his remarks to young people: “You are
inheriting a country where politics feels like rage. It feels like rage
is the only option.”
But, Cox said, a different path is possible: “Your generation has an
opportunity to build a culture that is very different than what we are
suffering through right now.”
He said the 22-year-old suspect in Kirk's killing had become “more
political” in the run-up to Wednesday's shooting on a university campus.
Cox also spoke of the harms of social media and said it was terrible
that Kirk's slaying was “so gruesomely displayed” for everyone to watch
online.
“We are not wired as human beings biologically, historically we have not
evolved in a way that we are capable of processing those types of
violent imagery,” Cox said. “This is not good for us. It is not good to
consume. Social media is a cancer on our society right now.”
[to top of second column]
|
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox speaks at a news conference, as FBI Director
Kash Patel looks on, Friday, Sept. 12, 2025, in Orem, Utah, (AP
Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
These approaches are not new for Cox
As governor, Cox has sought to curb the harms of social media on
young people, signing laws that require social media companies to
verify the ages of their users and disable certain features on
accounts of minors.
Though he lives in heavily Republican Utah, where little bipartisan
action is needed for his party to enact its agenda, Cox has for
years emphasized respect and unity. As governor, he has consistently
invoked a need for civility — a trait that’s at home in the culture
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a faith to which
Cox and many in the state belong.
His more moderate tone became rarer as Utah’s politics drifted
rightward in the Trump era. At a statewide convention of Utah
Republicans in April 2024, Cox was booed. “Maybe you hate that I
don’t hate enough,” Cox told the crowd. He still won his state's GOP
primary and reelection in November.
In 2016, Cox drew national attention for his remarks after a mass
shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Then, he called for
people to come together and appealed to their “better angels.” He
also apologized for having been unkind while in high school to
students he later learned were gay.
He also drew attention during his 2020 campaign for governor, in
which he appeared in television ads with his Democratic opponent as
they pledged to “disagree without hating each other.”
Cox was openly critical of Trump and did not support him until after
the president survived an assassination attempt in Butler,
Pennsylvania, last year. The governor wrote then-candidate Trump a
letter expressing admiration for his defiant response to being
struck by a bullet.
In that letter, Cox told Trump he believed “God had a hand in saving
you” and that “miracle” gave him an opportunity to unify the
country.
“We need to turn down the temperature and find ways to come together
again before it's too late,” Cox wrote.
Minutes before Cox took the stage Friday, Trump had that opportunity
as he sat for a live interview on Fox News Channel. He was asked how
the country could be brought back together. Trump said his response
would “get me in trouble, but I couldn't care less.”
Before he launched into a list of grievances with his Democratic
opponents, the president said: “The radicals on the left are the
problem.”
___
Associated Press writer Chris Megerian contributed to this report.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved
 |
