Utah’s Republican governor implored President Donald Trump to ‘unify and save our country’ after 2024 assassination attempt: ‘It would be fair to suggest I failed,’ Spencer Cox now says
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has revealed that he hoped the July 2024 assassination attempt against Donald Trump would mark a turning point in American politics, giving the then-presidential candidate a chance to lower the nation’s political temperature and break from what Cox calls a cycle of retaliation and contempt.
Looking back, Cox says that hope went unfulfilled.
“It would be fair to suggest I failed,” Cox writes, according to reporting on his forthcoming memoir.
The book behind the admission
Cox’s reflections appear in his upcoming book, Off Ramp: How to Be a Peacemaker in an Age of Contempt, published by Penguin Press and scheduled for release September 8.
The book combines Cox’s personal history and governing philosophy with a case for national depolarization, while offering an inside account of defining moments during his time as governor.
The letter Cox wrote after Trump was shot
Cox drafted a letter to Trump the day after a gunman’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024.
In an interview with KSL ahead of the book’s release, Cox said he prayed for guidance before writing the letter. He also recognized “there was a very good chance” Trump would return to the presidency and that maintaining a positive relationship could help address issues such as the shrinking Great Salt Lake.
Cox wrote directly to Trump: “You have the opportunity to do something that no other person on earth can do right now: unify and save our country.”
Cox acknowledged that Trump likely did not think highly of him because he had not endorsed Trump in previous elections. Still, he argued that Trump could become a unifying figure.
An endorsement followed by disappointment
Cox endorsed Trump in July 2024, a decision he later described to KSL as leading to a period that felt “dark and lonely,” although he said he would make the same choice again.
Cox writes that while he and Trump agreed on issues including border security and support for working-class families, they followed “different paths on contempt and loving our enemies.”
Their relationship later included a lengthy Oval Office meeting on college athletics, tariffs and immigration reform, as well as Trump’s public support for efforts to protect the Great Salt Lake.
Still, Cox says his broader hope that Trump would choose unity over retaliation never materialized.
“When I wrote to President Trump, I hoped he would choose unity over retaliation,” Cox writes, according to The Atlantic, which obtained an advance copy of the book. “In both cases, things didn’t turn out quite the way I’d hoped. It would be fair to suggest I failed.”
Cox’s push for a pardon for Trump
The second failed effort Cox references involved former President Joe Biden.
Cox has said he urged Biden to pardon Trump as part of an effort to heal the country’s political divisions. During a meeting with Biden in Salt Lake City around August 2023, Cox recalled telling him, “Mr. President, I know this might sound crazy. But I think you should pardon Donald Trump,” according to The Atlantic.
Trump was facing criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions at the time.
Cox said Biden appeared “interested” and later told him he had discussed the idea at length with then-first lady Jill Biden.
“In fact, just this week as we were lying in bed, Jill and I had a long conversation about it,” Biden recalled telling Cox, according to NOTUS.
Biden ultimately rejected the idea, telling Cox that “too many people in our country are demanding justice.”
The Charlie Kirk assassination and its aftermath
A significant portion of Off Ramp focuses on the September 10, 2025, assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem.
Cox recounts learning of the shooting shortly after 12:20 p.m., when an urgent update from Utah Highway Patrol Captain George Hansen interrupted a quarterly staff lunch, according to Deseret News.
At a news conference following Kirk’s death, Cox called the killing “a political assassination,” arguing that Kirk was targeted while engaging in political speech and that the attack struck at core constitutional principles.
Cox said he was particularly disturbed by the online reaction, including posts celebrating Kirk’s death and calls for further violence against conservative figures.
“I felt like I was standing before a tinderbox and the whole nation was holding a match,” Cox said of remarks he delivered in the days following the shooting.
He also praised Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, for what he described as breaking a “toxic cycle” by publicly forgiving Tyler Robinson, the man accused of killing her husband.
“Forgiveness is an act of courage and America needs more of it,” Cox writes.
Cox’s broader message on contempt in politics
Throughout Off Ramp, Cox distinguishes political disagreement from contempt, which he describes as viewing opponents as beneath consideration or respect.
“The problem is that we aren’t just disagreeing with each other; we’re despising each other. Peacemaking has sometimes been stigmatized as weak. But the real political danger facing America today is not disagreement but contempt,” Cox writes.
Cox argues that the lesson of Kirk’s killing is not that Americans should stop disagreeing, but that they must learn to disagree without dehumanizing one another.