Governor talks Trump endorsement, Biden visit, getting booed by GOP in new book

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Gov. Spencer Cox described the aftermath of his surprise endorsement of President Donald Trump as "dark and lonely," but he told KSL he would do it again.

The endorsement, which came in 2024 after Trump was shot in the ear by a would-be assassin, is one of the topics covered in Cox's new book, "Off Ramp: How to Be a Peacemaker in an Age of Contempt."

The book, which will be released Sept. 8, draws on the governor's efforts to turn down the temperature in American politics. It chronicles his response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk last year, during which he urged Americans to "find an off-ramp" from political violence and de-escalate tensions.

It also reveals Cox's unsuccessful attempts to steer both former President Joe Biden and Trump toward what he felt would be a healing path for America.

In an interview with KSL ahead of the book's release, Cox said he won't "pretend that a book from a governor is going to solve all of our problems or fix our country," but he believes "Off Ramp" can offer practical ideas to mend political disputes with family and friends.

"Far too many Americans have lost a real friend, a close friend or a family member to politics," Cox said. "That's incredibly damaging. That should not be happening in our country, and I think if we can solve those problems, ultimately we can fix our country."

Why Cox urged Biden to pardon Trump

In "Off Ramp," which is part political memoir and part social science discourse, Cox describes meeting with then-President Biden in Salt Lake City in 2023. The visit came just days after Trump was federally charged for his alleged role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Political tensions were high. Just that morning, FBI agents shot and killed a Provo man who allegedly posted messages online threatening Biden.

Cox recalled asking Biden for federal help to save the shrinking Great Salt Lake and expressing concern about national monuments. He then asked the president a final question while riding in his motorcade.

"Mr. President, I know this might sound crazy, but I think you should pardon Donald Trump," he wrote, believing it would help heal the divide in the country.

Biden responded that he had actually considered granting pardons to the former president, who had also been indicted in a federal case involving the handling of classified documents.

"I just think that too many people in our country are demanding justice," Cox recalled Biden saying. "I just don't think I can do it. But I will consider it."

Ultimately, Biden didn't take the governor's advice.

Not quite a year later, Cox wrote to Trump, then a candidate for president, following the July 2024 assassination attempt. He urged Trump to "do something that no other person on earth can do right now: unify and save our country."

"In both cases, things didn't turn out quite the way I'd hoped," Cox wrote. "It would be fair to suggest I failed."

However, he added, "Peacemaking rarely means an overnight conversion from divisiveness to unity. Progress can be slow and bumpy, and we have to give our relationships time."

'Dark and lonely times'

After repeatedly criticizing Trump for years and refusing to endorse him as the Republican nominee in 2016 and 2020, the governor's 2024 endorsement came at great personal and political cost.

Even some in Cox's own circle felt betrayed by his abrupt turnaround.

"I felt strongly that I needed to work harder to create a relationship with President Trump," Cox wrote, while noting that some of his closest friends "begged me to change my mind."

He even recalled one former Republican state lawmaker telling the governor in an open letter: "You have lost your credibility and relinquished your honor."

"These can be dark and lonely times," Cox wrote.

But as Cox sees it, his embrace of the president was vindicated in the hours and days following the shooting of Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of the president, at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025.

"Charlie's death could easily have been the match that lit the tinderbox of a nation," Cox wrote. "However, that didn't happen, and I hope that at least one small reason for that was the positive relationship that has developed between the president and me. It might have made it easier for him to trust my leadership and allow an off-ramp to de-escalation."

Knowing what he knows now, Cox said he would still make the same decision to support Trump. He told KSL some of his close friends and family members who disagreed with that decision have come around. Others haven't, but he said that hasn't severed their personal ties.

"I valued those relationships more than an endorsement or anything else, and to their credit, I think they value those relationships more," he said. "That's ultimately the case I'm making in the book is that we still disagree … and we still love each other. We still care about each other. We can still disagree without hating each other."

Getting booed at GOP convention

The governor also wrote about the Utah Republican convention in April 2024, when he was facing a primary challenge from then-state Rep. Phil Lyman. Without mentioning Lyman by name, Cox wrote that his opponent "had created a campaign based on lies and conspiracy theories," and he expected a tense reception among the more conservative party delegates.

It was worse than he thought. Cox was loudly booed throughout his entire speech. The governor wrote that he abandoned his prepared remarks and instead went after the crowd, telling them, "maybe you just hate that I don't hate enough."

"The words coming out of my mouth felt good. I'd stood up to contempt," Cox wrote. "But I was wrong. … After a few days I realized that I'd made a mistake. You see, I returned contempt with contempt. I returned hate with hate."

Cox said he spent time over the next month attending town hall meetings — which included some who booed him — and apologizing "for my contempt."

"Many times, they had believed lies about me that were easily proved wrong. But many also had legitimate concerns about decisions I had made and helped me to check myself and change course," he wrote. "It was hard to swallow my pride and admit my mistakes, but it made me a better person and governor. Sometimes, we just had to agree to disagree."

Repairing relationships

Early in the book, Cox didn't mince words when he wrote that the United States is "on a path to a complete failure of our democratic republic and its institutions." He said that threatens life not only for Americans, but for the entire world.

The solutions, the governor wrote, include being curious, giving people grace and rebuilding connections with others. He recounted deleting all social media apps from his phone just before Christmas 2025 after realizing he had become addicted to them.

"The most important things in life are never happening on our phones," Cox wrote. "They're happening right in front of us."

That extends to other forms of media, he said, where outrage and contempt draw more eyeballs and hold their gaze longer. Cox experienced this in his own family, describing his late father-in-law as becoming "addicted" to talk radio.

"We saw some changes in him where he became much angrier, much more combatant and really just wanted to argue about politics all the time," he told KSL. "It made it hard for his family, for his kids. They weren't sure they wanted to visit as often because it just wasn't the same as it was before."

Cox described his father-in-law as "one of the greatest men I've ever met," and when his wife, first lady Abby Cox, asked her father to "step away from the political programming," the "anger and bitterness disappeared."

"We didn't have her father around for many more years, but those years weren't wasted in contempt, bickering, or sparring," he wrote. "They were spent the way Abby's family had always spent time — working the farm, sitting together, singing John Denver or Simon & Garfunkel songs, going to church, eating meals, and still loving each other at the end of the day no matter what happened."

In his book, the governor also expressed optimism for the future despite the significant challenges facing the country, and he encouraged readers to feel equally hopeful.

Running for president?

Cox's work pushing for political peacemaking and spreading a message of conciliation at the national level has led many observers to suggest he has his eye on the White House.

The governor sought to put that issue to bed with his first words in the book.

"I'm not running for president," Cox wrote. "No, really."

Cox, who has said he won't seek reelection to the governor's office in 2028, insists he wrote the book as a "neighbor, a Christian, a father." He said his book is "something much more ambitious than even running for president."

"I want to convince you to become a peacemaker," he wrote, "even in this age of contempt."

Related topics