Erika Kirk says she forgives the man accused of killing her husband

Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, speaks at the memorial service for the right-wing activist at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., on Sunday.

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Erika Kirk, widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, said she forgives her husband’s alleged killer.

“That man, that young man … I forgive him,” Kirk said, wiping away tears as the audience at Kirk’s memorial at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., erupted in applause on Sunday.

“I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do,” she said. “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”

Last week prosecutors filed murder charges against 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. Officials said Robinson had admitted to shooting Kirk to his roommate, saying in a text message, “I had enough of his hatred.”

Erika Kirk, who is 36 and the mother of two young children, tearfully described the moment she saw her husband’s body at the hospital in Utah, hours after he was shot in the neck while debating college students at Utah Valley University.

“I saw the wound that ended his life … I felt shock, I felt horror and a level of heartache that I didn’t even know existed,” Kirk said. “But even in death, I could see the man that I loved. I saw the single gray hair on the side of his head, which I never told him about. I also saw in his lips the faintest smile. It revealed to me a great mercy from God in this tragedy. When I saw that, it told me Charlie didn’t suffer.”

Speaking to tens of thousands of people at the stadium, Kirk said she had found comfort in prayer and also in the way people had responded to her husband’s death.

“We didn’t see violence, we didn’t see riots. We didn’t see revolution. Instead we saw what my husband always prayed he would see in this country: We saw revival. We saw people open a Bible for the first time in a decade,” she said, urging people to continue doing so.

“Pray again, read the Bible again, go to church next Sunday, and the Sunday after that and break free from the temptations and shackles of this world,” Kirk said.

Her remarks came in striking contrast to both the vice president and president, who bookended her speech. Vice President Vance said that “evil still walks among us” and that society “shouldn’t ignore it for a fake kumbaya moment.” President Trump said: “I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them.”

Emphasis on the family

Kirk had another message for the crowd, saying that the “greatest cause in Charlie’s life was trying to revive the American family.”

“When he spoke to young people, he was always eager to tell them about God’s vision for marriage and how if they could just dare to live it out, it would enrich every part of their life in the same way that it enriched ours,” she said.

She told the men in the audience to follow her husband’s example in a Christian marriage where they are the spiritual heads of the family, who love and lead their wives and protect their children.

“Please be a leader worth following,” Kirk said. “Your wife is not your servant. 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.”

Kirk compared her husband to a martyr who died doing the will of God. She said, while her husband had died far too early, “he was ready to die, he left this world without regrets” because he had done “100% of what he wanted to do every day.”

“He died with incomplete work but not with unfinished business,” Kirk said.

Last week, Kirk was named the new CEO of Turning Point USA, the right-wing youth organization that her late husband founded.