(gentle triumphant music) - [Announcer] PBS Utah presents, "The Governor's Monthly News Conference," an exchange between Utah Reporters and Governor Spencer Cox.

(gentle triumphant music continues) - Good morning, everyone.

Welcome.

It's great to see all of you here, and I'm excited to be back with you again.

I want to start, if I could, just by talking about wildfire season.

It's been an extremely hot month with below average rainfall, which is a bad combination when it comes to wildfires.

So far this year, we've had 552 wildfires that have burned about 40,000 acres.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of those fires, 409, were caused by humans from roadside starts caused by vehicles, careless target shooting, and we've seen a few from fireworks.

Now, as we approach Pioneer Day, the 24th of July, a huge celebration in the State of Utah, I'm urging all Utahns to please, please, please celebrate safely.

Play it smart with fireworks.

They are restricted in many areas, so check with your city or town before lighting fireworks.

And please don't ignite near dry grass or trees.

And remember to soak your used fireworks in a bucket of water before throwing them away.

We've had some houses that have unfortunately caught on fire because of fireworks that were placed in garbage cans.

If you're camping, make sure to, if fires are legal at all, that you always have a bucket of water and a shovel nearby to extinguish your campfire, and check for heat before leaving.

Do not leave your campfire until it is cool to the touch.

When target shooting, please use ammunition, safe ammunition and targets and make sure you're shooting in an area that is appropriate and fire wise.

Please keep a shovel, water or fire extinguisher nearby.

And remember that exploding targets are not allowed on public lands.

Before heading out to your next adventure to enjoy what Utah has to offer, please check UtahFireInfo.gov to stay updated on the latest fire restrictions in your area, and also check the National Weather Service for any red flag warnings.

I especially wanna thank our firefighters right now.

We've had a couple very concerning wildfires.

The one in Mayfield and one by Cedar City, as well as some others throughout the state.

It's just been incredible to see their action in saving lives and saving property.

We've really gotten close to some catastrophes and been able to avoid that because of the great work of our firefighters.

So please, please keep these first responders in mind before you light fireworks or do anything that could cause a fire.

A final plug for recreating safely in this hot weather.

We've also seen some tragedies in Southern Utah because of the extreme heat.

People who are hiking, make sure you're well hydrated, you wear lots of sunscreen, and you dress appropriately for the weather conditions.

We really want everyone to have a safe and happy Pioneer Day.

And before I get to questions, I want to give just a shout-out and a thanks to my senior advisor, Jennifer Napier-Pearce, who has been with us for four years.

Today is her last day with us as she moves on to bigger and better things.

She's been incredible.

I know she's worked with all of you for many years.

We're big fans and we're very sad to see her go, but grateful for her service to the great state of Utah.

And with that now, we'll go ahead and take some questions.

- Governor, you had a big change related to President Trump in the last week.

Explain that.

- Well, so sure.

Well, last Saturday, we had something very tragic that happened in our nation.

We had an assassination attempt, something that we haven't seen in my lifetime since I was a little kid.

I remember I was in, I don't know, first grade or or something, second grade, when Ronald Reagan was shot.

I remember being at home and watching that on TV with my parents.

It was a very sobering moment.

It's something I've been worried about.

It's something I've talked about.

In fact, when we had our first convening of the National Governor's Association, we had a speaker who talks specifically about political violence in our country.

And we've seen an uptick in threats of political violence here at home, in the state of Utah.

DPS had a report last week that showed that there had been an increase in investigations of threats of political violence.

We've certainly had them against me and my family.

But to see live an actual assassination attempt that, you know, if the former President hadn't turned his head just slightly, would've clearly ended his life.

And it was a very sobering moment.

I spent the night distraught, worried about our nation, and what we've become and who we are.

I spent the next day, Sunday, in contemplation.

Prayed a lot and I just felt that I needed to write a letter to the former President, which I did.

It was a personal letter.

I understood it got shared this morning and has been shared around.

And that's okay.

I'm fine with that.

I have no problem with people reading that letter.

I think it explains very well where my heart is and where my head is right now.

I was grateful to see the president say some things that he's never said before in the moments after that, in the statements that he released.

And in parts of his speech last night, the former president talked about the need to lower the temperature and unify our country.

I was very heartened by the statement that Melania Trump put out as well.

This is something I believe in, you guys.

I preach it.

I try to live by it.

I'm not very good at it.

I know that former President Trump isn't very good at it.

Hasn't been for a long time.

That's been one of my biggest struggles for sure.

And yet, there's a willingness to try.

And that's all I can ask for and hope for.

And so, I told him in that letter, I said, "You know, if you'll do this, I will do everything I can to help and support you."

And so, that's what I'm doing.

I'm doing everything I can to help and support him.

We'll still have lots of disagreements, I'm sure, and we'll still do everything we can to help the State of Utah and to help the Republican Party be successful.

I'm a proud Conservative.

I'm a little different Conservative maybe than the party is today.

I always consider myself a Ronald Reagan Conservative, and certainly there are some differences between that and the party.

And I'm trying to be open and to learn from people who have different ideas within the party.

I try to represent the very best of the party.

I hope I've done that in the past.

I want you to know that nothing has changed.

I'll continue to do that.

And so, my support of President Trump is that.

I'm going to help him be successful.

I said several months ago, in this very setting, that I feel he's going to win Utah and I feel very confident, more confident now than ever before, that he's going to win the presidential election.

Right now, I don't think it's close.

Again, I don't know what's gonna happen with Democrats.

I think something that many have been saying for a long time now, people on the other side are realizing that they have a candidate who can't continue.

And so, we'll see what happens.

But right now, it's not really close.

Every swing state, Trump is leading.

I think, in every swing state.

I think he's led in the national polls the entire time, which is very different than four years ago.

So he's gonna win.

He doesn't need my help to win at all.

That's just going to happen.

But I do think that I can help and be a voice when it comes to helping to unify our nation, when it comes to helping to lower the temperature, and to reduce political violence.

And that was my commitment in the letter to him.

That I would do that.

And so, I will follow through on that commitment.

- You're endorsing and you now will vote for the former President?

- Yeah, I said in that letter, "I will support you."

Yes.

And that's part of supporting.

I'll do everything I can to help.

And again, my commitment to him was that I would help him try to lower the temperature in this country.

And I sincerely hope that from what I've heard from people around him, that he's committed to this.

That, again, this is something that hasn't been high on his list in the past.

I think that's probably an understatement.

And so, I'll work closely with him to help do that.

- [Reporter] Will you vote for him?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Veronica] Governor Cox?

- Please.

Go ahead.

- At the R and C there were intensive viewpoints about the issue on immigration.

- Yes.

- Such as the possibility of mass deportation starting next year.

How did you see the situation here in Utah, taking into consideration that a year ago you said that, "Utah was a welcoming state?"

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Utah has always been a welcoming state.

And I'll say what I've said in the past.

And I think, again, what we've heard, what we heard from former President Trump, what we heard from the newly nominated candidate for Vice President as well, Senator J.D.

Vance, is exactly what we've been saying.

And that is, "Look, we have to figure this out."

This is a massive problem.

We have to secure our border.

And I wanna thank my fellow governors on the left who have said the same thing.

I now have governors I never thought I would hear governors, Democratic governors, saying that, "A top priority is to secure the border."

And so, we absolutely have to do that.

And then we also have to fix legal immigration.

And I was grateful to hear a welcoming message that we do need to fix legal immigration, that we understand that we are a country of immigrants, and that immigration is really important to who we are.

And so, I'll continue to support those standards.

- Follow-up to the presidential race.

If Biden were to drop out, which some people expect him to do as soon as this weekend, would that change your calculus as far as your confidence that Trump will win the election in November?

- That's a good question.

I don't know that it would change my calculus, you know?

And again, none of this was based on a calculus.

This was all based just on these intense feelings that I've had over the course of the past week, and the past year.

But I don't know!

I mean, I will tell you just as a student of politics and of history, it's a wild time out there.

There will be books written on just, if that's true, if President Biden does drop out.

Now we're talking kind of 50 year history timeframes.

Maybe going back to Nixon, the last time we had.

I recognize those are very different, but a sitting President who's not even a candidate and to do it so late.

I'm more curious in how they pick, if that happens, who comes next, you know?

I don't know how that would go about.

I think it's been pretty clear from polling that the Vice President Harris also is not very popular.

And so I don't know that that would change any calculus at all.

But the idea of an open convention is just wild.

Again, as somebody who studied political science at Utah State, we never thought we would see an open convention again.

Those were things that happened in the past, you know?

Maybe 1952, contested in 1960 or whenever.

I don't know.

It's been a long time.

But this is the stuff of Lincoln showing up and having votes, multiple votes, over the course of days.

I have no idea what that would look like.

I don't know how they would pull that off.

Modern conventions are not set up for that type of thing.

The modern rules of convention are not really set up for that.

And so all I can say is, and there's new reporting today that says that President Biden is not going to drop out.

So, I don't know what to believe anymore or what's going to happen.

But it should be fascinating.

- If the Democratic nominee were to be a candidate like Maryland Governor Wes Moore, who's kind of embraced a disagree better approach to turning down the temperature of politics in the country, would you prefer to see that kind of candidate in the next President?

- Well, I think that would be good for the country.

Whoever they choose, it would be good to have someone who is, again, committed to lowering the temperature, to reaching across divides, to trying to represent all of America instead of just half of America, as President Trump said last night.

I think that would be good for both parties.

I've long said that there's a market failure happening in both parties.

That neither... That Americans weren't happy with either candidate from the major parties.

I don't think that that's changed.

I think, again, in large part because of who each party nominated, the other party felt more comfortable nominating the person that they have.

But parties are no longer controlled by a group full of people in smoke-filled rooms as it was maybe in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Parties are just groups of people with a process that come together to select something.

So now, I mean, the Democrats have already gone through a big part of that process, but now I guess their delegates would have an opportunity to vote for someone else.

And I think it's healthy to have new choices in our country, over time.

And so, I guess just new is different is maybe a benefit for their party.

But again, it depends on who that is and how they do it.

- [Inquirer] Governor?

- [Reporter] There's a little- - Hold on.

- [Governor] Yeah?

- You've called on President Trump to try to take the temperature down.

- [Governor] Yeah!

- Do you have any reason to believe that he will actually do that this campaign?

And if not, does that change the way that you look at him?

- Yeah, I do have reason to believe that he will do that.

I have reason.

Again, people have been trying to ask him to do this for eight years and he's never said things like he said in the past week.

Look, you guys, I don't know what it feels like to have a bullet graze my ear, to come that close to knowing that your life could be over.

But I have to think that it would require some introspection and clearly it has with him.

And I admire that.

Now, look, I also know that it's hard.

Change is hard for all of us, and it's probably harder the older we get.

I know it is for me.

But what we have seen and heard is that he is very interested in this.

And again, I've heard that from people that are very close to him, that have had direct conversations with him about what happened and how it impacted him personally.

And so, I'm very hopeful that we'll see more of this.

I'm not naive to think that it will be a total change or anything like that.

I get that.

He's a flawed person.

I'm a flawed person.

He's a flawed candidate.

I'm a flawed candidate.

And so, but I am again, I've made my commitment that I will do this.

And as a man of my word, I'll follow through with that commitment.

Bryan?

- Governor, we reported this morning that you called off investigations into the conduct of Utah National Guard, former Utah National Guard Adjutant General Michael Turley in 2021 and 2022, and only fully investigated these allegations after the army substantiated, an army investigation substantiated misconduct in 2023.

Knowing what you know now, would you have approached that differently?

- So, Bryan, let me be very clear.

What you reported today is completely wrong.

Completely and utterly falsehood.

It's not true at all.

I never called off an investigation.

In fact, I started two investigations.

Those investigations did not find anything because they were anonymous complaints, and we did not have any evidence of actual wrongdoing by the Adjuvant General.

We got stonewalled because there was an investigation that was happening.

We received anonymous complaints.

I receive anonymous complaints all of the time.

The first one did not say that there was actual misconduct by the Adjuvant General.

What it said was that there was a cultural problem and that there was concern that he had not given the maximum penalty to someone else.

There was no naming that he had had an inappropriate relationship with a person.

We did not know who these people were that were making these allegations.

We had no one to go and talk to about these allegations.

So what did I do?

I did what every governor should do, and that is: I started an investigation.

And what happened?

I didn't stop investigations.

I have no idea where you guys made that up from.

There is no evidence whatsoever that I stopped or prevented any investigation from happening.

It's the exact opposite.

So we heard there was a cultural problem.

So what did we do?

We implemented an anonymous survey to allow people within the organization to report back if they felt there was a cultural problem.

There was a group or a portion of those that said there was some cultural problem.

So we worked with the Adjuvant General and others within the organization to implement steps to help alleviate those cultural problems.

So we had sexual harassment training that was implemented to help work through some of those issues.

So when we got another anonymous complaint, we asked the HR person for the State of Utah to start an investigation, which they did.

And they went through an investigation and they came back and said, "Look, we have these anonymous complaints.

We can't find anybody that will substantiate any of this.

We don't have a name of a person that if there wasn't an inappropriate relationship.

We have nobody we can talk to."

And then I heard from a reporter that the DOD was doing their own investigation.

So we reached out to the DOD and we said, "Hey, are you guys doing an investigation?

Do you have some names or somebody we can investigate?"

And they said, "We can't talk to you about an ongoing investigation."

So all I could do was sit on my hands and wait until that investigation was complete.

So I didn't stop an investigation.

I waited for the federal government, who it's in their purview to perform their investigation.

Once they did, the very day they finished their investigation and sent us the materials that showed that, yes, they actually had the person, they were actually having conversations with the person, a name I had never been given, no one in our organization had ever been given, then we immediately were able to take action, which we did.

So yes, if I had all of the information from the DOD report on the day I got the anonymous complaint, I would've taken very different action.

But I can't just go out and fire people.

By the way, you also reported that I fired him.

He resigned.

So that was, again, other misreporting.

But that's the truth about what happened.

The documents are very clear.

The documents that we gave you say that.

I have no idea why this article was written that way.

But that's the truth about what happened.

- Governor, a recent study came out that finds that like lake effect snow, the Great Salt Lake now can generate lake effect drought.

Does that add to the urgency of the situation?

And is the state doing enough?

- Yeah, it does.

It does.

This is not a secret.

This is not a new study.

We've always known that, that lake effect is really important to add snow to our mountains.

We know that there's a portion of the snow that we get in addition to what would normally fall because we have lake effect.

So we've always known that, and that's why we have the urgency.

That's why we appointed a Commissioner of the Great Salt Lake.

That's why we have a report or a plan now moving forward about how to get those lake levels up where they need to be.

And that's why we're executing on that plan.

So there's nothing new in that study that we didn't already know, but it absolutely is part of why we're so passionate about saving the Great Salt Lake, and why we're committed to making that happen.

- [Ben] But do you need to do more?

- No!

I mean, we need to do what the plan says to do, which is exactly what we are doing.

Yeah?

- Governor, it was just a week ago, it seems like a lot longer than that, but the NGA was here.

- Yeah!

- You appeared with Governor Polis from Colorado.

We asked the Governor, "Should the program in Denver to pay to send migrants to Utah, stop?"

He didn't really give an answer.

One, were you disappointed with his non-answer?

And two, what should the posture of Colorado and Denver be now?

- Yeah.

Well, sure.

Look, we've had these conversations, very respectful conversations.

We've been told that those have slowed or stopped.

That we're not seeing those migrants being sent to Utah.

I'm hoping that that's true.

We've certainly seen a reduction recently in the number of migrants that are coming to Utah.

And that should be the case everywhere.

I believe very strongly we should not be sending migrants to other cities.

Other cities should not be sending them here.

I think that's how we have to work together.

But again, this only happens because of a complete failure of the Biden Administration to do their job, to do what they're supposed to do.

And that is to secure the border and to stem the flow of illegal immigration into the United States.

And so that's, again, my heart goes out to anybody trying to deal with this.

Denver is getting overrun.

Salt Lake City's getting overrun.

Every part of Texas is getting overrun.

California's getting overrun.

Minnesota, Wisconsin, every state is dealing with this.

Every single governor I talk to is dealing with this.

I was talking to the Governor of Montana.

The same thing's been happening up there.

Buses and planes have been moving immigrants there.

This is every state's a border state, and it's very problematic.

- So what should the posture of Denver and Colorado be in terms specifically now?

Granted the numbers may have slowed.

- The posture should be that we're not sending immigrants to other cities.

That's the posture.

- That should be the same for everybody?

- [Governor] Correct!

Yes!

- Including Utah?

Has Utah done it?

- No, we have not.

Yeah.

- Governor, what can be done to help school districts like in the Harriman area in Utah with a drastically increased number of English language learning students because of this immigration surge?

- Yeah!

Again, this is the problem, just the weight that this puts on all of us everywhere.

And so, we need to get resources where they're needed.

And that's what we're working towards.

And again, working with the federal government as well.

This is a federal problem.

The Constitution is very clear that immigration is in the purview.

If they left it up to the states, we could have solved this already.

Happy to solve this.

We have no problem solving it.

I could solve it by lunchtime with my fellow governors, but the Constitution doesn't allow us to do that.

- With an Olympics announcement.

- Go ahead.

- Go ahead, please.

- Governor, the Project 2025 Initiative calls for a repeal of the Antiquities Act and suggests adjusting some monuments in Utah.

You've been critical of Federal Public Lands Policy, but do you support repealing the Antiquities Act?

- Yeah.

What I support?

I don't support a complete repeal of the Antiquities Act.

I think the Antiquities Act has value.

The problem is that the Antiquities Act has not been used the way it was intended to be used.

The Antiquities Act was meant to protect very, very particular antiquities.

I mean, it's right there in the name.

It was not meant for large scale million acre deployments.

I mean, that's just not what this was supposed to do.

These large landscapes.

And so, what I support is a return to the intent of the Antiquities Act.

That's the lawsuit that we're working on that will eventually get to the Supreme Court.

We're getting close there.

And I feel very confident that the Supreme Court will look at this and say that, "Yes, the Presidents have not followed the Antiquities Act the way it was intended to be followed.

They've breached that."

And they'll be hopefully held accountable.

So I would love to see that.

What I would say is, I believe that there are some states, and correct me if I'm wrong, that have some exemptions to the Antiquities Act where Congress has to approve it.

We would love something like that for the State of Utah, because we've been, again, kind of the pin cushion for Democrats.

Whenever they need an environmental win, they just approve another monument in Utah.

And I don't think that was ever intended.

- [Reporter] Governor after the- - Please.

- Going back to immigration.

Venezuela's presidential elections will be in less than 10 days.

We have a huge Venezuelan community here in our state seeking asylum.

There are fears of Nicolas Maduro interfering or stealing those elections.

Any comments to those Venezuelan residents who live here in Utah?

- Yeah.

We love our Venezuelan residents who live here us.

I know many of them.

They're wonderful people.

We're obviously deeply concerned about elections in other countries that could have impacts abroad and impacts here.

We're hopeful that the Venezuelan elections will go as planned, that there won't be any violence, that the Maduro Regime won't cause any more problems than they already have.

And that the people of Venezuelan will be able to choose their leaders and live there, and live there peaceably.

- [Adjudicator] Okay, we are out of time right now.

- Another question over?

Oh, sorry, Ben.

- For our television broadcast portion.

Thank you so much for joining us for "The Governor's Monthly News Conference."

(gentle triumphant music) - [Announcer] This has been "The Governor's Monthly News Conference."

For video and more information, visit PBSUtah.org/governor.