Utah Governor Spencer Cox is once again drawing the ire of conservatives, this time for his tone-deaf comments in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Just days after the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder was cut down by a far-left extremist while calmly debating students on a college campus, Cox suggested that Kirk bore some responsibility for the nation’s heated political climate because he had said “inflammatory things.”
Instead of offering an unqualified defense of free speech and condemning political violence, Cox essentially adopted the Left’s favorite tactic…blame the victim.
“I’m not saying we have to just sing kumbaya and hold hands,” Cox said, before adding, “Charlie said some very inflammatory things, and in some corners of the web, that’s all people have heard.” The governor offered no specifics, which is telling. What he did allude to were the wildly distorted claims circulating online that Kirk supposedly said gun violence casualties were “worth it.” In reality, Kirk was making a nuanced argument, explaining that, just like with car accidents or industrial mishaps, some level of risk exists in a free society. He highlighted that much of gun crime comes from illegal weapons and that disarming law-abiding Americans is not the solution. But the Left clipped his words, stripped them of context, and used them as ammunition.
Cox did acknowledge that Kirk also spoke about forgiveness, faith, and the importance of community. He quoted Kirk’s warnings that “if we don’t keep talking, that’s when the violence starts.” Yet Cox still managed to muddy the waters by suggesting Kirk’s straightforward conservative arguments somehow contributed to the toxic climate. That framing is precisely what angers conservatives.
Critics wasted no time calling him out. Newsmax host Chris Plante summed it up bluntly: “Spencer Cox is again proving that Republicans are the stupid party. You would never hear a Democrat politician say something like this about one of their leaders. Charlie Kirk was right about him!” And he’s not wrong. Kirk had been a sharp critic of Cox, especially after the governor vetoed a ban on so-called gender reassignment surgeries for minors in 2022, a move that left conservatives in the deep red state baffled.
Instead of standing firmly with a conservative martyr cut down for his beliefs, Cox chose equivocation. It’s the kind of political cowardice that fuels frustration at establishment Republicans who seem more interested in appeasing the Left than defending their own.
Leave a Comment