GLENDALE, Arizona — Erika Kirk revealed that she forgives the man who killed her husband Charlie and preached unity and peace in a stunning, searing speech that left mourners speechless and crying on Sunday.
“He wanted to save young men. Just like the one who took his life,” Kirk’s widow said through tears, speaking behind the presidential seal on stage at State Farm Stadium.
She added: “I forgive him because it was what Christ did. And what Charlie would do.
“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.”
Wearing all white, and choking back tears as she slowly approached the podium on stage to applause, she told the crowd of more than 70,000 — with an estimated 130,000 more outside — “God bless all of you for coming here from all over the world to honor and celebrate my Charlie.”
“When you say ‘here I am, lord, use me,’ God will take you up on that. And he did with Charlie,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.
“Eleven days ago, God accepted that total surrender from my husband and then called him to his side,” she continued.
“On the afternoon of Sept. 10, I arrived at a Utah hospital to do the unthinkable: To look directly at my husband’s murdered body. I saw the wound that ended his life, I felt everything you would expect to feel. I felt shock, I felt horror and a level of heartache that I didn’t even know existed,” she said mournfully.
“But there was something else, too. Even in death I could see the man that I love. I could see the single gray hair on the side of his head, which I never told him about — now he knows, sorry baby.”
She said she saw on his lips “the faintest smile,” which she said “revealed a great mercy from God in this tragedy,” and said at that moment she realized he hadn’t suffered.
In a stunning moment, Erika proclaimed that her activist husband “was ready to die” — and explained what she meant.
She spoke glowingly of his work and legacy.
“He named his organization well. He knew things were not right with America, especially with young people, and that they needed a new direction,” she said of the Turning Point USA founder.
“Charlie passionately wanted to reach and save the lost boys of the West. The young men who feel like they have no direction, no purpose, no faith and no reason to live. The men wasting their lives on distractions and the men consumed with anger and hate,” she said.
“When he went onto campus, he was looking to show them a better path and a better life that was right there for the taking … My husband Charlie, he wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life.”
Then she spoke directly of her husband’s accused murderer, Tyler Robinson.
“That young man. That young man. On the cross our savior said, ‘father forgive them for they know not what they do’ — that man, that young man, I forgive him,” she said as the audience rose in a standing ovation, many of them in tears.
Erika told the New York Times this week that she wears the blood-stained St. Michael pendant her husband was wearing when he was fatally shot while addressing a crowd at Utah Valley University Sept. 10.
She revealed the night before the shooting she had begged her husband to start wearing a bulletproof vest — a friend suggesting he speak behind bulletproof glass.
“Not yet,” Charlie replied optimistically, adding that he was confident in his security team and the additional measures being taken at the university.
— Additional reporting by Steven Vago
