Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow and new messiah of MAGA Christianity – EL PAÍS English

The wife of the slain Trump activist has emerged as a rising public figure at the crossroads of politics and religion in US conservatism
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin set out last Thursday to answer the million-dollar question on the American right: Who will be the next Charlie Kirk? “You,” Youngkin said. “All of you.”
The Republican politician was addressing a packed auditorium at Virginia Tech, the university where Charlie Kirk — the MAGA youth leader and a key ally in Donald Trump’s victory in the last U.S. elections thanks to his ability to attract young voters — had been scheduled to speak. It should have been the third stop on a tour of various campuses that began on September 10 in Utah Valley, the day when a bullet ended his life while he was debating before a crowd of students. “You will have a leader that’s extraordinary,” Youngkin added. “Erika Kirk has demonstrated that she not only has the courage of a lion, but she has the heart of a saint.”
The activist’s widow and mother of their two children has emerged as an influential figure in U.S. politics after her husband’s murder. But particularly since the memorial held last Sunday in honor of Kirk, who was killed at age 31. The event was somewhere between a Republican rally and religious service, and drew 100,000 people, spread across two stadiums in Glendale, Arizona. At the memorial — an extraordinary collision of religion and politics — Charlie Kirk was celebrated as a “martyr” by Trump and much of his Cabinet.
Erika Kirk said she had forgiven her husband’s alleged killer, a 22-year-old man named Tyler Robinson, “because it’s what Christ did.” Raised in a Mormon and Republican household, Robinson, according to court documents and the testimony of his relatives, had lately embraced leftist positions and confessed to his partner that he was tired of the “hate” he believed Kirk was spreading through his ultraconservative rhetoric.
Her words, especially when contrasted with those spoken shortly afterward by Trump — “I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them. I am sorry Erika” — won praise from both sides of the political spectrum. They even drew approval from Jimmy Kimmel, the comedian who had been briefly suspended from his show after a remark about Robinson — a move that sparked criticism of the government attacks on free expression. “If you believe in the teachings of Jesus as I do,” Kimmel said, his voice breaking, during the monologue marking his return to the air, “there it was, that’s it. A selfless act of grace, forgiveness from a grieving widow.”
“Of course, the rhetoric of forgiveness is preferable to that of holy war, but we mustn’t forget that she has also used that rhetoric,” explains Jeff Sharlet, an expert on the relationship between religion and political power in the United States and author of The Family in a telephone interview. Sharlet is referring to the speech Erika Kirk gave a couple of days after her husband’s murder, in which she said: “You have no idea the fire that you ignited within this wife, the cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.”
“We also shouldn’t forget that her forgiveness came after other speakers [in particular Stephen Miller, deputy to the White House chief of staff] compared her to a ‘storm,’ a ‘sword,’ and a ‘dragon,’ and before Trump spoke openly of hatred, only to then embrace her in a hug — almost like a representation of the male and female archetypes of Christian nationalism,” says Sharlet, referring to one of the core tenets of a certain strand of the American right: the blind faith that American identity can only be Christian.
According to Sharlet, “few did more for that idea than Charlie Kirk. He told his followers to go to church, yes, but above all, he brought the church into the MAGA world, because now MAGA is the true faith: that is Christian nationalism.”
The expert considers Erika Kirk the natural “successor.” “Everyone is asking what comes after Trump. J. D. Vance? I don’t think so. It could be Erika Kirk. She is the first lady now. She is playing the role of Evita Perón, and she’s doing it brilliantly,” says Sharlet, who is quick to clarify that this does not mean “her grief isn’t authentic,” distancing himself from those who have judged her for the public, almost live-broadcast way she has lived her mourning — so much so that The Washington Post, argued she has emerged as “a vocal public figure, redefining role of political widow” in the American imagination. That response to her husband’s death has also unleashed varied and wild conspiracy theories in the darkest corners of MAGA.
“[Kirk] will undoubtedly have a lasting and far-reaching influence on America,” agrees conservative commentator Matthew Continetti. “With her communication skills, her moving story, and her personal connection, she could become the next Billy Graham [perhaps America’s most famous evangelical preacher and an influential figure for former presidents Richard Nixon, George Bush Jr., and Bill Clinton], lead a generation to Christianity, and become the first female president.”
Trump and the widow have known each other since 2012, when the Republican owned the Miss USA pageant and Erika Kirk was the contestant representing Arizona. As a teenager, she set up a foundation. She studied political science and law. She worked on Trump’s first campaign. She met her future husband when he interviewed her for a job at Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the nonprofit he had founded at age 18 alongside a powerful Tea Party activist. During that meeting, he told her: “I don’t want to hire you, I want to date you.” They married in 2021.
Although always in her husband’s shadow, Erika, now 36, already had a public profile before the assassination. It included a weekly religious podcast (one of its episodes, featuring both of them, was titled “Submission Is Not a Bad Word”), a line of “faith-based clothing,” and an annual TPUSA women’s event that brings together leading female voices in the United States against feminism. In an interview earlier this year, when asked which of the two was more conservative, Charlie Kirk replied: “She is. Next to her, I’m a moderate.”
Three days before the televised funeral — watched, according to organizers, by some 100 million people — Erika Kirk was chosen as CEO of TPUSA, an organization with 1,500 employees that reported revenues of $85 million in 2023. Since the death of its founder, multimillion-dollar donations have poured in, as well as some 37,000 requests to open chapters at universities across the country.
In the speech she delivered at the memorial, Erika called on “the lost boys of the West” to “accept Charlie’s challenge and embrace true manhood.” “Your wife is not your employee. Your wife is not your slave. She is your helper. You are not rivals. You are one flesh working together for the glory of God.” After her appointment, TPUSA spokesman Tyler Bowyer wrote on X that “Charlie Kirk came and converted the young men. Erika Kirk is coming to convert the young women,” a demographic sector that traditionally rejects the Republican Party.
The succession also places Erika Kirk at the head not only of the campus-events machine that made her husband famous for showing up to debate liberal students and try to convince them that universities were “brainwashing” them with progressive ideas; she is also in charge of Turning Point Action, the arm dedicated to promoting conservative candidates, and of the lineup of podcasts recorded in a Phoenix studio, near where the couple lived.
The Charlie Kirk Show was the platform where the late activist voiced his controversial opinions, his religious beliefs, his passion for Trump, and his transphobic and anti-immigration ideas. He championed traditional marriage over women’s careers; singled out university professors; and mocked affirmative action initiatives. Since his death, the program has continued with a rotating roster of hosts and the participation of prominent MAGA figures, including Vice President J. D. Vance.
Charlie Kirk was an evangelical, but both Vance and Erika Kirk are Catholics. They belong to a conservative faction in the United States that believes the Vatican went too far under Pope Francis, and that now, with Leo XIV, things are unlikely to change. “Catholics who reject Rome… isn’t that the same as saying Protestants?” Sharlet asks.
Last Friday, the widow appeared on The Charlie Kirk Show to share more details about TPUSA’s plans. She does not intend to replace Kirk behind the microphone. Instead, his collaborators will continue taking turns. The show will put “Charlie first and his dreams alive and his legacy going,” said Erika Kirk. They will also draw on “unreleased material.” “We have Sunday specials lined up to the brim because my husband was so intentional about making sure that there was enough content, always.”
As for the campus events — like last Thursday’s, where the governor of Virginia envisioned thousands of Charlie Kirks — the questions the slain activist used to answer will now be fielded by others, such as, in that case, journalist Megyn Kelly, formerly of Fox News. The widow promises they will continue to be organized, although no longer outdoors.
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