Charlie Kirk’s widow fought back tears as she broke her silence two days after the assassination of her husband and vowed to continue the right-wing movement he founded.
Erika Kirk spoke publicly Friday for the first time since Kirk’s killing, standing beside the empty chair where her husband would broadcast his show.
Speaking from Phoenix, Arizona, the address was streamed across the platforms of the conservative group Turning Point USA, founded by the MAGA influencer.
“If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea,” Erika Kirk said. “You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country.”
“The movement my husband built will not die,” she vowed. “It won’t. I refuse to let that happen. It will not die.”
“I’ll make Turning Point the biggest thing this nation has ever seen,” the widow said, adding that the organization’s “American Comeback Tour” would continue this fall despite Kirk’s assassination.
The next stop on the tour is less than six days away at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, according to the organization’s website.
Turning Point’s annual conference, AmericaFest, would also go ahead in December, according to Kirk’s widow.
“It will be greater than ever,” she said.
The mom, who has two young children with Kirk, said that their three-year-old daughter asked, “Where’s daddy?” when she arrived home Thursday evening after escorting her husband’s casket back to Phoenix with Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance on Air Force Two.
“I said, ‘Baby, daddy loves you so much,’” she told their daughter. “‘Don’t you worry. He’s on a work trip with Jesus so he can afford your blueberry budget.’”
She became visibly emotional when she thanked President Donald Trump for his support.
“I want to thank President Trump and his incredible family,” said Erika Kirk. “Mr President, my husband loved you, and he knew that you loved him too.”
More than 200,000 people tuned in to watch the livestream on YouTube.
Kirk met his wife, a fellow evangelical Christian, in New York City in 2018.
They were engaged the following December and married in May 2021 in her native Scottsdale, Arizona.
The appearance comes as suspect Tyler Robinson, 22, of Utah, is now in custody and expected to appear virtually in court on Tuesday.
His father told a family friend that Robinson “confessed” to the crime after confronting his son, having recognized him in photos released by the FBI and Utah Department of Safety. That family friend then informed authorities, Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox announced at a press conference.
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