We Have Our Agency

Now again, to my young friends out there, you are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage.  It feels like rage is the only option.

But through those words, we have a reminder that we can choose a different path.

Your generation has an opportunity to build a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now, 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, and there is one person responsible for what happened, and that person is now in custody and will be charged soon and will be held accountable.

And yet, all of us have an opportunity right now to do something different. ...

We can return violence with fire and violence.  We can return hate with hate.  And that's the problem with political violence is it metastasizes because we can always point the finger at the other side, and at some point, we have to find an off-ramp -- or it's going to get much, much worse.

See, these are choices that we can make.  History will dictate if this is a turning point for our country, but every single one of us gets to choose right now.  If this is a turning point for us, we get to make decisions.  We have our agency.

-- Governor Spencer Cox (R-UT) at a press conference with the FBI and local law enforcement officers on the investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk (12 September 2025)