Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, will succeed him as director of Turning Level USA, the right-wing nonprofit he established to advocate for conservatism on faculty campuses.
Her takeover, introduced Thursday following a unanimous vote by the Turning Level board, isn’t a lot of a shock. When she addressed the general public in livestreamed remarks days after her husband’s taking pictures demise, Erika Kirk appeared poised to take cost.
“You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry,” she stated. “To everyone listening tonight across America, the movement my husband built will not die. … No one will ever forget my husband’s name, and I will make sure of it.”
“The movement’s not going anywhere,” she vowed.
Samuel Corum by way of Getty Photographs
Erika Kirk hasn’t had a lot to say in the best way of her late husband’s extra intense rhetoric in opposition to immigrants, Muslims and LGBTQ+ individuals, however there are indications she could sustain that messaging after which some.
When she appeared on an episode of his podcast earlier this 12 months, the pair took an viewers query about who was extra conservative. With out skipping a beat, Charlie Kirk answered: “Erika, by far, not even close. I am a moderate compared to Erika.”
She laughed as she agreed with him, saying that having children made her “100%” extra conservative, “which I didn’t think was possible,” she added.
Turning Level didn’t instantly reply when requested to broaden on methods Erika Kirk is extra conservative than her late husband and whether or not she plans to take the group even additional to the appropriate.
Eric Thayer by way of Getty Photographs
The information of her new position prompts one other large query: How will Erika Kirk, 36, reconcile her new position as CEO with the messaging she’s promoted at her late husband’s facet ― that younger ladies ought to prioritize marriage and childrearing over profession aspirations, that she believes in “submitting” to her husband, and that girls shouldn’t goal to “chase a paycheck”?
“You are meant, as a woman, to be the guardian of your home, to be the helpmate of your husband,” she stated at a Christian convention earlier this 12 months.
“When I met Charlie, that was it. I could care less about a career,” she stated in June at Turning Level’s Younger Ladies’s Management Summit.
Although Erika Kirk rejected “boss babe culture” as “toxic” throughout these appearances, she was already a businesswoman with a podcast, clothes line and Christian ministry.
Earlier than turning into Charlie Kirk’s spouse, Erika Kirk, then Erika Frantzve, performed faculty basketball and gained Miss Arizona USA in 2012. She additionally briefly appeared in an episode of Bravo’s “Summer House” actuality sequence and later claimed she turned down a suggestion for a full-time position on the present to concentrate on her research at Liberty College.
She and Charlie Kirk met when she interviewed with him for a job at Turning Level and married in 2021.
In a video of him she posted after his demise, he recalled saying to her on the assembly: “Forget this job interview, I want to date you.”
