Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, will succeed him as director of Turning Point USA, the right-wing nonprofit he established to advocate for conservatism on college campuses.
Her takeover, announced Thursday following a unanimous vote by the Turning Point board, isn’t much of a surprise. When she addressed the public in livestreamed remarks days after her husband’s shooting death, Erika Kirk appeared poised to take charge.
“You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry,” she said. “To everyone listening tonight across America, the movement my husband built will not die. … No one will ever forget my husband’s name, and I will make sure of it.”
“The movement’s not going anywhere,” she vowed.
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Erika Kirk hasn’t had much to say in the way of her late husband’s more intense rhetoric against immigrants, Muslims and LGBTQ+ people, but there are indications she may keep up that messaging and then some.
When she appeared on an episode of his podcast earlier this year, the pair took an audience question about who was more conservative. Without skipping a beat, Charlie Kirk answered: “Erika, by far, not even close. I am a moderate compared to Erika.”
She laughed as she agreed with him, saying that having kids made her “100%” more conservative, “which I didn’t think was possible,” she added.
Turning Point did not immediately respond when asked to expand on ways Erika Kirk is more conservative than her late husband and whether she plans to take the organization even further to the right.
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The news of her new role prompts another big question: How will Erika Kirk, 36, reconcile her new role as CEO with the messaging she’s promoted at her late husband’s side ― that young women should prioritize marriage and childrearing over career aspirations, that she believes in “submitting” to her husband, and that women shouldn’t aim to “chase a paycheck”?
“You are meant, as a woman, to be the guardian of your home, to be the helpmate of your husband,” she said at a Christian conference earlier this year.
“When I met Charlie, that was it. I could care less about a career,” she said in June at Turning Point’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit.
Though Erika Kirk rejected “boss babe culture” as “toxic” during those appearances, she was already a businesswoman with a podcast, clothing line and Christian ministry.
Before becoming Charlie Kirk’s wife, Erika Kirk, then Erika Frantzve, played college basketball and won Miss Arizona USA in 2012. She also briefly appeared in an episode of Bravo’s “Summer House” reality series and later claimed she turned down an offer for a full-time role on the show to focus on her studies at Liberty University.
She and Charlie Kirk met when she interviewed with him for a job at Turning Point and married in 2021.
In a video of him she posted after his death, he recalled saying to her at the meeting: “Forget this job interview, I want to date you.”