"Does It Matter?" Republican Candidate Won't Say How Many People He's Killed
Most candidates running for governor talk about taxes. About education. About roads and crime and the cost of living.
Victor Marx talks about killing people.
He is the frontrunner in the Colorado Republican primary for governor. And when a local news anchor asked him last week how many people he has killed, he paused for ten seconds, looked up at the ceiling, and said: “Does it matter?”
It is a reasonable question to have about someone who wants to run a state.
The Interview
Marx sat down for a 30-minute interview with 9News anchor Kyle Clark. Clark asked Marx about his previous claim that his abusive stepfather forced him to kill a man at age 7. “Is that the only person you’ve ever killed?” Clark pressed. Marx fell silent for more than 10 seconds, taking a deep breath and looking upward as if searching his memory.
“Well, I would say, as a child, yes. Without question,” Marx finally replied. “But I’ve been in other situations where, you know, possibly people or persons died as a result of me defending myself in other countries. There’s no count on that,” he added, before trailing off: “There’s no photos...”
There’s no photos. That was his answer. About whether he has killed people. Running for governor of Colorado.
It Got Stranger
Clark noted that Marx had talked about “the idea of killing people with some frequency,” pointing to Marx’s interview on a podcast last year in which he said: “Granted, some people have to get killed, some people have to die.”
Clark then asked: “You claim that you once called in a U.S. military airstrike that killed 70 ISIS fighters. I didn’t realize that civilians could essentially facilitate military airstrikes. Could you walk me through how that works?”
Marx did not walk him through how that works.
Clark noted that Marx served in the military but never deployed or saw combat, raising questions about where these stories actually come from. Clark wrote that “it’s not clear how much is true and how much is big talk to sell books and raise funds for his $7 million-a-year ministry.”
The Numbers He Won’t Give
The interview was full of questions Marx refused to answer with anything resembling a number.
Clark noted that Marx’s campaign website had previously claimed his nonprofit rescued more than 45,000 women and children, a claim that was later quietly removed from the site. “How many women and children have you rescued?” Clark asked.
“I would say it’s more than one, and less than a bunch,” Marx said.
More than one. Less than a bunch. From the frontrunner in a major American gubernatorial primary.
Who Victor Marx Is
Marx, 60, has built his political brand around a tough-guy image he calls the “Dangerous Gentleman,” which is also the title of his book. He runs a Colorado Springs nonprofit called All Things Possible Ministries, which claims to lead dangerous missions into foreign nations to deliver aid and restore victims of trauma. The nonprofit takes in about $7 million per year.
Marx is currently the leading candidate in the Republican primary for Colorado governor, a race that also includes state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer and state Rep. Scott Bottoms. Colorado has trended Democratic in recent election cycles, making Republican primary choices and their general election viability a subject of ongoing scrutiny.
The MAGA base in Colorado looked at their options and put a man who cannot say how many people he has killed at the top of the polls. That is the choice they made.
This Is a Pattern, Not a Coincidence
Victor Marx is not the only MAGA-aligned candidate running for governor while refusing to answer basic questions from the press.
Marsha Blackburn, the Republican frontrunner for Tennessee governor, is refusing to debate her Republican opponents and has not been giving media interviews. When a reporter from NewsChannel 5 approached her after a public event she spoke at, she stonewalled every question.
“We’re talking to Tennesseans every single day,” Blackburn repeated, over and over, as she backed toward an elevator trying to escape the reporter’s questions. The reporter asked if she would debate her opponents. “We’re talking to Tennesseans every single day,” she said again. He asked if voters had a right to hear from her. She said it again. He asked why she changed her mind and voted to certify the 2020 election after originally saying she would object. The elevator doors finally opened. She got in. She left.
One candidate won’t say how many people he has killed. Another won’t answer questions at all. Both are leading their primaries.
The Bottom Line
Victor Marx wants to be the governor of Colorado. He claims he has killed people but cannot say how many. He claims he called in an airstrike that killed 70 ISIS fighters but will not explain how a civilian did that. He claims his nonprofit rescued 45,000 people but removed that number from his website when anyone asked about it.
When a reporter asked him directly how many people he has killed, he paused for ten seconds and said: “Does it matter?”
Colorado voters will answer that question in the primary. They probably should.