Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) handed former President Trump an endorsement Friday following a failed assassination attempt on Trump last weekend, a reversal of his previous stance.
“Mr. President, I know we have some differences and you probably don’t like me very much. And that’s okay,” Cox wrote in a letter to Trump, who he shared in social platform X. “I am not writing this letter looking for a position in your cabinet or a role on your team.”
“I told everyone that you are going to win the state of Utah and you are going to win the presidency again. You don’t need my help and support to do this. However, you have a chance to do something that people say is impossible,” the governor continued. “You have a chance to build a coalition of support that our country has not seen. since Ronald Reagan.”
He added: “You, and only you, can be that kind of leader for us today.”
Cox is one of the last Republican governors to support the former president, after Trump accepted the GOP’s formal endorsement on Thursday on the final day of the Republican National Convention.
The Utah governor has been a vocal critic of Trump in the past, including blaming him for the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Cox called on the former president to resign after the insurrection, saying it would be “good for the country”.
In February, he said it would be a mistake for the party to nominate Trump for president again.
On July 11 — two days before Trump was grazed in the ear by a bullet during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania — Cox told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins that he I didn’t plan to vote to any major party candidate in the 2024 election. Instead, the governor said he would write to someone, as he did in 2016 and 2020.
However, Cox said that after the assassination attempt, he was “grateful” to hear Trump call for unity and “lowering the temperature.”
“There’s a willingness to try,” Cox said during a Press conference Friday. “That’s all I can ask for and hope for. So, I told him in that letter, I said if you do this, I will do everything I can to help and support you.”
According to Utah Dessert News, Cox sent the letter to Trump on Sunday and planned to release his endorsement only if he was satisfied with Trump’s acceptance speech at the convention. He called the speech a “winning message” that the nation “desperately needs right now.”
“People have been trying to ask him to do this for years, and he has never said things like he said last week,” Cox wrote Friday on X. “My commitment to him was that I would help him try to get his temperature down. in this country.”
“From what I’ve heard from people around him, he’s committed to this, which again, this is something that hasn’t been at the top of his list in the past,” he added. “I think that’s probably an understatement and so I’ll work closely with him to help do that.”
Cox also predicted that Trump was on track to win, saying he was “not even close,” pointing to data showing the former president ahead in national and state polls.
His prediction, however, was accompanied by a call for Trump to treat President Biden with “respect” as a growing number of Democrats pressure Biden to withdraw in the face of growing concerns about his age and mental fitness. .
“By treating President Biden with basic human dignity and respect, and by emphasizing unity over hate, you will win this election by a historic margin and become one of our nation’s most transformational leaders,” the governor wrote.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
