1 year after Charlie Kirk's death, Cox reflects on his own leadership during a national crisis

SALT LAKE CITY — One year after Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University, Gov. Spencer Cox still remembers the disbelief he felt.

His first thought, he says, was simple: "This can't be real."

He immediately understood that what had happened in Utah reverberated beyond state borders.

"I got the notification about the shooting and within a minute, maybe two minutes, the White House was on the phone," Cox recalled.

President Donald Trump called Cox personally several hours later. Cox said the president was shaken, not only because Kirk had been killed, but because Kirk was his friend.

"This affected him in a way that I don't think even I anticipated," Cox said.

Kirk, the conservative activist and Turning Point USA co-founder, was shot while speaking to students on the campus of Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025. Cox immediately called the killing a political assassination and vowed the person responsible would face the death penalty.

"I was very angry," Cox said in an interview with KSL's Lori Prichard one year after Kirk's death. "It felt like it was an attack on our country, our ideals, free speech. The things that we hold so dear."

The governor found himself at the center of a national crisis. He became increasingly worried that entrenched political positions would become so amplified to a point of eruption.

In a press conference announcing the arrest of Tyler Robinson on Sept. 12, 2025, Cox called for what he described as an "off-ramp" from the anger and hostility of political rhetoric.

"This is our moment," Cox said in the days after the shooting. "Do we escalate or do we find an off-ramp? And again, it's a choice. It's a choice, and every one of us gets to make that choice."

The violence Cox had feared would immediately ensue did not materialize. Instead, Utah and communities around the country turned toward mourning and remembrance.

Cox frankly credits Kirk's widow, Erika Kirk, with helping to set a different tone when she publicly forgave her husband's killer and urged people not to answer hate with hate.

Still, the deep political divisions remained.

Cox also became a target of sharp criticism after the suspect, who is from Washington County, was arrested.

"I was praying that if this had to happen here that it would not be one of us; that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country," he said during the press conference announcing that the suspect, Tyler Robinson, had been arrested.

A year later, Cox stands by that sentiment but acknowledges he could have chosen his words differently.

"There is nothing in that statement at all that is racist," Cox said. "Sure, I could have said that some other way. But I never in a million years thought that innocuous statement could be taken to an extreme like that. But that's the way everything is today."

The governor says Kirk's death was a crisis unlike anything he has faced during his two terms in office.

"I'm so far from perfect," he said. "I was just making it up as we go along — there is no handbook for this."

Cox said the country had not experienced a political assassination that generated this level of attention in decades.

"Nobody knows how to handle this," he said. "I made mistakes. I'll continue to make mistakes. But we just keep trying to do the very best we can."

In the aftermath, Cox received praise from political leaders across the country and, notably, across party lines for his insistence on deescalating the rhetoric he felt was tearing the country apart.

His message of "Disagree Better," which had been a central part of the governor's political identity before Kirk's death, gained renewed national attention.

Cox's new book, "Off Ramp: How to Be a Peacemaker in an Age of Contempt," was released Sept. 8 and is the same call to action the governor made during his press conference in the days after the shooting.

"Look, we're definitely not there yet," he admitted a year later. "Wherever there is. But I'm hopeful. I'm more hopeful than I have been in a long time."

Cox remains concerned about the country's political climate, but he says he is more hopeful than he was immediately after Kirk's death.

For Utah, Cox says the lasting lesson should be that political disagreement does not have to turn into political violence.

"I hope it means that we have an opportunity to show people that there's a better way," he said. "That we can disagree without hitting. That we can disagree without shooting each other."

The attention surrounding Kirk's death also fueled speculation about Cox's own political future. Even more liberal Democratic politicians suggested Cox's message could resonate in 2028 if he were to make a bid for the White House.

Cox, however, says he has no plans to seek higher office or any office. He says he has run his last election.

Cox says the lesson he carries forward is not about his own political future. Instead, it is about the choices Americans make when confronted with division.

"The future of our country is at stake," Cox said in the days after Kirk's death. "And every single one of us gets to choose."

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