Erika Kirk, wife of the late Charlie Kirk, said she forgives her husband’s murderer.
“My husband, Charlie, wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life,” Erika Kirk said as she looked up during his speech at Sunday’s memorial for her spouse.
“On the cross, our savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do.’ That man. That young man. I forgive him,” she added.
Her comments, directed at the 22-year-old suspected of shooting and killing her husband, were met with a standing ovation at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, where she joined President Donald Trump and other administration officials for a seven-hour memorial event on Sunday attended by 95,000 people.
Behind bulletproof glass, Erika Kirk began her speech by recalling a 2023 speech in which her husband quoted Isaiah 6:8, which states, “Here I am, Lord, send me.”
She recalled that afterward, she told her husband to warn her next time before making that kind of statement.
“Because when you say something like that, there is so much power in that verse. When you say here I am Lord, use me, God will take you up on that,” she said.
“And he did with Charlie,” she added.
Kirk described seeing her husband’s “murdered body” in the hospital on Sept. 10 after he was shot dead while debating college students at Utah Valley University. She said she felt shock, horror and a level of heartache she didn’t know existed.
She said as she looked at him, she saw the “faintest smile” on his lips, and that gave her comfort because she took it to mean that he didn’t suffer.
“Even the doctor told me, it was something so instant that even if Charlie had been shot in the operating room itself, nothing could have been done,” Kirk told the crowd.
She added that even though her spouse died “far too early,” he was “ready to die” because he didn’t put off anything. “Charlie died with incomplete work but not with unfinished business,” she said.
Charlie Kirk, a far-right activist, founded Turning Point USA, a nonprofit aimed at spreading conservative beliefs to college students, in 2012. He often held informal debates on college campuses, which is what he was doing when he was shot and killed. During those debates and on his podcast, he often expressed racist, sexist and transphobic views, which many condemned while he was alive and after his death.
According to Erika Kirk, her husband “passionately” wanted to reach and save the “lost boys of the West.”
“The young men who feel like they have no direction, no purpose, no faith, and no reason to live,” she explained. “The men wasting their lives on distractions and the men consumed with resentment, anger and hate. Charlie wanted to help them. He wanted them to have a home with Turning Point USA.”
That’s when she referenced the suspected shooter, saying she forgave him because that’s “what Christ did and it is what Charlie would do.”
“The answer to hate is not hate,” she said. “The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”
It’s not the first time Kirk has shown leniency toward her husband’s suspected murderer. On Thursday, she told The New York Times, “I do not want that man’s blood on my ledger. Because when I get to heaven, and Jesus is like: ‘Uh, eye for an eye? Is that how we do it?’ And that keeps me from being in heaven, from being with Charlie?”
She then endorsed Turning Point USA, saying the world needs an organization that will point young people away from “misery and sin” and toward “truth and beauty.”
Throughout Charlie Kirk’s time in the spotlight, he used Turning Point USA as a vehicle to elevate his Christian nationalist views, like that marriage should be between one man and one woman. At a Turning Point USA Young Women’s Leadership Summit in 2022, he said that a woman should marry a man who is a protector. At that summit, other speakers said that a woman’s calling is to be a mother and that American women should have more babies.
Erika Kirk, however, acknowledged that she would be taking the reins of the organization her husband had founded. “I am tremendously honored to be the new CEO of Turning Point USA,” she said on Sunday. “I do not take that lightly.”