In the hours following the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, Governor Spencer Cox stood before the press and offered a prayer. But it wasn’t for the victim’s family, or for a nation reeling from yet another act of political violence. It was a prayer that the perpetrator would be someone from “another state” or “another country.” In his own words: “For 33 hours, I was praying that if this had to happen here, that it wouldn't be one of us — that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country… Sadly, that prayer was not answered the way I hoped for.”
Governor Cox was hoping the killer would be an outsider. Preferably a foreigner. That’s not just a rhetorical misstep—it’s a dangerous invocation of the kind of scapegoating that has long fueled xenophobic policy and public distrust.
This kind of deflection is not new. It echoes the rhetoric of President Donald Trump, who just last year claimed Vice President Kamala Harris had “imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions.” These words weren’t just inflammatory—they were designed to shift blame away from domestic failures and toward imagined foreign threats.
Donald Trump and the Rise of Political Violence
U.S. President Donald walks toward reporters while departing the White House on September 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Governor Cox’s remarks, whether intentional or not, reinforce a narrative that violence is imported, not homegrown. That’s a lie. And it’s a lie that has consequences.
The suspect, Tyler Robinson, is a resident of Utah. His arrest should have prompted a sober reflection on the conditions that allow radicalization to flourish within our own communities. Instead, Cox’s remarks implied that violence is somehow more palatable—less shameful—if committed by someone who doesn’t “belong.”
This framing is not only morally hollow, it’s statistically baseless. Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, commit crimes at significantly lower rates than native-born citizens. A 2024 study from the National Institute of Justice found that undocumented immigrants in Texas were arrested at less than half the rate of U.S.-born citizens for violent and drug crimes, and at a quarter the rate for property crimes. The Migration Policy Institute reports that immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans. The facts are not ambiguous: immigrants are not the threat.
What is a threat, however, is the persistent political impulse to deflect blame outward—to cast suspicion on the “other” rather than confront the rot within.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham framed the moment with chilling clarity: "Political violence erupts in America when there is an existential question—who is an American? Who deserves to be included in ‘We the people,’ or ‘All men being created equal’?” he said. “When that is in tension, when we don’t have common agreement about that, then, if you look at it historically, violence erupts." These are not rhetorical flourishes. They are the fault lines of a democracy under siege.
Political violence in America is not a foreign contagion. It is domestic, it is rising, and it is often fueled by rhetoric that dehumanizes, divides, and deflects. The bullets that killed Charlie Kirk were fired by someone born and raised in Utah. That fact should not be a source of shame—it should be a call to accountability.
Governor Cox later said, “We can return violence with fire and violence. We can return hate with hate… but at some point we have to find an off-ramp.” He’s right. But that off-ramp begins with truth. And the truth is: it was one of us. It often is.
Until our leaders stop praying for convenient villains and start confronting uncomfortable realities, the road ahead will only grow darker.
Meacham: Political Violence in America Linked to Deep Questions of Identity and Inclusion
"Who is an American? Who deserves to be included in ‘We the people" - Jon Meacham AI generated illustration
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network. Balta is the only person to serve twice as president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ).
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.