WATCH: NBC’s Welker Confronts Utah Gov. Spencer Cox About Trump’s Focus On ‘Radicals On the Left’ in Wake of Charlie Kirk Killing
NBC’s Kristen Welker confronted Gov. Spencer Cox, on Sunday, about President Donald Trump’s one-sided criticism of “radicals on the left” following the killing of Charlie Kirk.
In an interview on Meet the Press, Welker played an excerpt of Trump’s appearance on Fox & Friends Friday in which he called left-wing radicals “the problem.”
“The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime,” Trump said. “They don’t want to see crime, they’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’ The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”
“What is your reaction to that message from President Trump, Governor?” Welker said.
Cox tried to downplay the president’s comments.
“Well, look, I’ve talked to President Trump,” Cox said. “President Trump is angry, and he has every right to be angry. A lot of Americans are very angry right now, and there clearly was a leftist ideology with this assassin. And so I totally understand that anger. I also wish you would have played the clip where he quoted Charlie Kirk about the importance of nonviolence because he said that, too.”
The governor also said the White House specifically requested that he visit the Sunday shows following the assassination of the conservative activist at Utah Valley University.
“The reason I’m doing these morning shows — I don’t do much national press anymore —the White House asked us to come on and to talk about this, because they’re worried about the escalation that’s happening out there,” Cox added. “But again, I don’t know why we feel like we need to take our cues that we as Americans have to get up in the morning and decide how we’re going to react or act based on what the president says, or what a governor says, or what anyone else says. In my conservative philosophy — and, quite frankly, in my faith philosophy — we believe in agency. We believe that we are each individually responsible for ourselves. And the United States of America is a collection of a lot of different people. And again, no president is going to lead us out of this. It’s going to be every single one of us.”
Watch above via NBC.
