Utah Gov. Spencer Cox on Friday urged young people to not “rage” after the murder of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, as political tensions on the left and right have been heightened due to what officials are calling a “political assassination.”
“To my young friends out there: You are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage. It feels like rage is the only option,” the Republican governor said at the end of a news conference in which he announced law enforcement took into custody Tyler Robinson of Utah, the suspect in the shooting. “We can choose a different path.”
Political tensions have been thoroughly heightened ever since Kirk was fatally shot at Utah Valley University on Wednesday. Right-wing voices like Alex Jones and Jesse Watters have vowed revenge, with some going as far as to demand government violence against the left as a justifiable response to the shooting. They contend the shooter is a liberal, and that the shooting is the latest act of “war” against conservatives. Some people on the left, meanwhile, have celebrated Kirk’s shooting, arguing he was a white supremacist who caused violence through hate speech.
Although it’s not clear whether Cox was speaking to liberals or conservatives, he attempted, as some others have, to turn down the temperature:
“Your generation has an opportunity to build a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now,” Cox said in his message to young Americans. “Not by pretending differences don’t matter, but by embracing our differences and having those hard conversations.”
“I think we need more moral clarity right now. I hear all the time that words are violence. Words are not violence. Violence is violence,” the governor continued. “And there is one person responsible for what happened here, and that person is now in custody.”
