- Turning Point USA returned to Utah after founder Charlie Kirk's assassination on Sept. 10.
- Gov. Spencer Cox faced boos while discussing political violence and peace-building initiatives.
- Sen. Mike Lee honored Kirk, while Alex Clark urged attendees to "heal a sick culture."
LOGAN — Two competing visions for the future of the conservative movement were on display at a rowdy Turning Point USA event in Logan Tuesday, as many cheered the late Charlie Kirk for his approach to free speech and open dialogue, while others tried to drown out Gov. Spencer Cox with boos and shout down his calls for peace building.
Tuesday's stop on the "American Comeback Tour" was the organization's first return to the Beehive State since its founder was shot and killed during a previous tour stop at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. The event was intended to be headlined by Kirk, who was replaced by a video message from Utah Sen. Mike Lee and a panel featuring Cox, Fox News host and former Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, and Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs.
Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer of Turning Point USA, turned the discussion to Cox's "Disagree Better" initiative, and asked if political violence is really a "both sides issue."
"This isn't just about left and right, it's about good and evil," Cox said. "When you call people fascists and Nazis — well, we went and liberated Europe from fascists and Nazis, that is an evil. … This idea that speech is violence is so, so wrong, and … it goes a step worse than that because then they think that violence is speech."
The governor said equating political opponents with that evil is dangerous, and criticized the political left broadly for viewing many disagreements through the lens of "oppressed vs. oppressor." Cox said that dichotomy "justifies me to be violent toward this person for speaking, and that's exactly what happened in this case, and that is a destructive mind virus in our society today."
"That mindset is only coming from one side," he said. "The idea that speech is violence and violence is speech, that is not coming from the right."
Cox later said that violence is not unique to one side of the political aisle, drawing boos and shouts from the crowd. But the governor remained firm, saying "anger never persuades."
"That is not soft. Peacemaking is not soft, it's the hardest thing you can do. … And that's what Charlie understood," Cox said, referencing Kirk's regular debates with political opponents throughout the country.
"He treated them with respect. He treated them with love, and he treated them with dignity. That is not soft. There are people in our party who don't want us to do what Charlie did. They just want to call each other names and not engage at all, and we can't fall prey to that."
Lee originally planned to attend in person but appeared via a video message because he had to be in Washington for floor votes as the government approached a shutdown Tuesday night. Lee, a friend of Kirk, described being "immediately captured" by his message when he first met the conservative activist when he was a teenager.
"I introduced him to my daughter as a future president of the United States, and he would have been," Lee said.
The senator said he finds himself wishing often that things had gone differently the day Kirk was killed, but said some tragedies can't be understood and that "ideas, especially good ones, are stubborn."
"May Almighty God bless Charlie's family and his memory," Lee said. "May God bless Charlie's children, and may God bless this country he loved."
Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy spoke with KSL.com after the event, which she called "really positive" toward helping young Utahns feel safe in political events.
"I guess I've got a little New Hampshire 'live free or die' in me," she said. "I'd rather be out and with people and engaging than living in fear and missing out on what is such a quintessentially American experience."
She said the boos and dissents were handled professionally and emphasized that debate and disagreement are essential for politics. But as someone who has been shouted down at her own town hall as recently as this spring, she said "nobody's life is enriched" when speech is shouted down.
Maloy represents much of southern Utah, including the town where the man accused of shooting Kirk lived, and acknowledged the toll the past several weeks have taken on Utahns.
"There have been several news stories in the last couple weeks that have just hit way too close to home," she said. "We're hurting, we're angry, but we're rising to the occasion. And that's exactly what you would hope would happen when something ugly happens in our state."
Thousands of attendees queued outside the arena hours before the event began and chanted "USA! USA! USA!" as they filed in, their ebullience undimmed by reports of a "suspicious package" that forced the evacuation of Old Main at Utah State University just hours earlier. That package was later deemed not to be a threat but was detonated by the bomb squad as a precaution.
Attendees danced and clapped along to AC/DC and Guns N' Roses and erupted into cheers and chants of "Charlie, Charlie, Charlie" after a video montage of Kirk played before the program began. Alex Clark, the host of the Turning Point health and wellness podcast "Culture Apothecary," said the crowd of 6,500 people is the largest ever drawn for a Turning Point USA tour.
Weeks after his death, Clark said she wasn't in Logan to mourn his death, but "to pass the torch on to every single one of you."
"What we won't do — what we refuse to do — is bow to despair," she said.
Clark said the culture in the U.S. is "sicker than we've ever been," and urged attendees to "win the culture war."
"Now it's on all of us to heal a sick culture," she said, adding that the "fix" won't come through compromise with "the people who poisoned us."
"You are never going to heal a sick culture by blending in with it. You will only heal a sick culture by standing out apart from it," Clark said.
