Erika Kirk, CEO of Turning Point USA and widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, delivered an emotional and forceful rebuke Wednesday toward individuals exploiting her husband’s death for financial gain — many of them fueled by conspiracy theories pushed by former TPUSA personality Candace Owens. Kirk appeared on Fox News’s Outnumbered with Harris Faulkner, where she addressed the wave of online speculation targeting her family and her husband’s colleagues.
Faulkner, in the final minutes of the program, sharply criticized those profiting from the conspiracy theories surrounding Charlie Kirk’s assassination. She then asked Erika Kirk what conspiracy theorists were “taking” from her. Kirk responded not with self-pity but with steely resolve.
She compared the moment to a biblical passage. “It reminds me so much of Chapter Six in the book of Nehemiah,” she said, describing how Nehemiah stayed focused on his mission while detractors shouted from below. “I do not have time to address the noise,” Kirk emphasized. “My silence does not mean that I am complacent. My silence does not mean that somehow Turning Point USA and all of the handpicked staff that loved my husband … is somehow in on it. We are busy building.”
Kirk sought to show grace toward those grasping for answers in a moment of evil. “They are trying to find the answer to something that happened that was so evil,” she said of those pushing theories. But she stressed that she and her team have been diligently working with authorities: “Anytime we hear a lead … we send it to the authorities. No rock will be unturned.”
Her tone shifted when speaking about the line that has now been crossed. “Come after me, call me names — I don’t care,” she said firmly. “But when you go after my family, my Turning Point USA family, my Charlie Kirk Show family … and you’re making hundreds and thousands of dollars every single episode going after the people that I love because somehow they’re in on this? No.”
Faulkner noted she had never seen Kirk express such passion on air. Kirk replied, “This is righteous anger because this is not okay, it’s not healthy. This is a mind virus.”
Kirk detailed the toll the conspiracies have taken. “My team are not machines. They are human. We have more death threats … than I have ever seen. I have kidnapping threats. You name it, we have it,” she said. She described how staff members who witnessed her husband’s murder are forced to relive trauma each time false claims spread. “They watched my husband get murdered,” she said, adding she was grateful she did not have to witness it herself. “But my team, they are rocked to the core.”
She ended with a message for those amplifying baseless theories: “If people think that I was just gonna wilt away … I will never back down. My message to them is to stop. To stop!”
TPUSA staff members, including longtime Charlie Kirk Show producer Blake Neff, are preparing an event to publicly refute Owens’s claims. Owens has declined an invitation to attend.
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