Fox News host Tucker Carlson slammed Utah Governor Spencer Cox (R) during his show on Wednesday after video emerged that showed Cox sharing his preferred pronouns with a high school student during a virtual town hall event from last year.
“My preferred pronouns are he, him, and his,” Cox said. “So thank you for sharing yours with me.”
Utah "republican" Governor Spencer Cox shares his preferred pronouns with students to teach kids leadership with Equity & Inclusion#utpol @GovCox @SpencerJCox #Utah pic.twitter.com/ioLWv7WC4r
— Adam Bartholomew 🗨️ (@lifeisdriving) April 5, 2022
Carlson called Cox a “a cut-rate Gavin Newsom imitator” that “is a former telecom executive who always seems like he’s auditioning for the title of America’s guiltiest White guy.”
“What a creepy guy,” Carlson said. “Spencer Cox identifies as a male, at least to some limited extent. Cox could’ve cleared up that mystery a lot more quickly simply by declaring, ‘I’m a man.’ Instead, he went full hostage video.”
“What exactly is the market for superfluous pronouns in Utah?” Carlson continued. “Pretty limited. You would think most people in Utah don’t need be told, yet somehow Spencer Cox is their governor.”
Notable online responses to the video featuring Cox:
- Allie Beth Stuckey, podcast host: “AbsoLUTEly not.”
- Mark Hemingway, Real Clear Investigations: “What on earth is he doing.”
- Stephen Miller, former Trump advisor: “Adults have duty to provide children with stability and security. The effort by ‘adults’ in authority positions to convince children they aren’t really boys and girls but must uncover their true gender—then seek drugs and surgery to conform to that gender—is sinister child abuse.”
- Steve Deace, podcast host: “Getting some real Chester the Molester energy from this one.”
Cox angered conservatives late last month when he vetoed a bill aimed at protecting girls from having to compete against biological males in girls’ sports.
After the state legislature passed the legislation, Cox “quickly denounced the bill after it passed,” The New York Times reported. “He had met with lawmakers weeks earlier and expressed his support for creating a commission of experts who would determine eligibility in individual cases.”
Cox released a statement explaining his reasons for vetoing the bill, saying it was “substantially changed in the final hours of the legislative session.”
Cox stated that signing the bill into law could cause Utah’s private high school athletic association to go bankrupt from inevitable lawsuits that would follow the law going into effect. The governor also wanted a compromise with LGBTQ groups that would allow some transgender youth to compete in sports, a compromise that he said “fell apart” in the final hours of the session. Cox also claimed the late changes meant no public opinion could be heard on the new language and accused legislators of using a “poor process.”
Finally, he said that one of the reasons that he decided to vote against the bill was that he was “not an expert on transgenderism” and “when in doubt however, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion.”