Jack Graham wants you to know 20 people made professions of faith in Jesus Christ at the Turning Point USA rally held at Prestonwood Baptist Church Wednesday night. What’s making national headlines, however, is a video by TPUSA President Erika Kirk released the same day.
In that video, Kirk appears in the broadcast studio used by her late husband, Charlie Kirk, and she’s dressed all in black, with a black long-sleeved shirt and a solid black trucker’s cap. She appears somber and speaks slowly.
Screencaps and clips of the video immediately spread virally across social media, with some comparing her appearance to the alleged assassin who shot her husband and others saying she looked like Janet Jackson in “Rhythm Nation.”
Candace Owens and Vivian Kubrick weigh in
Among those calling out the video as peculiar was Candace Owens, a conservative commentator who has become a chief critic of Erika Kirk.
“The response has just been brutal,” Owens says in a video response. “Everyone is calling her out. They’re saying the look is wrong. People are making fun of her, saying she looks like she came dressed up as the assassin that was walking up the stairs allegedly. Erica Kirk’s out here dressing like Eminem when he got sober.”
Others have compared Kirk’s video appearance to an imperial officer’s uniform from Star Wars, Owens says. “It’s just weird. It was weird and it was awkward.”
In the video, Erika Kirk gives a 10-minute monologue before switching to a nearly two-hour reel of footage of her late husband in action.
The New York Post reported Vivian Kubrick, daughter of legendary director Stanley Kubrick, published a scorching critique of Kirk on social media after the video was posted.
She called Kirk’s speech “ghastly,” “inauthentic” and deeply unsettling, the Post said.
“I HAVE NEVER WITNESSED SUCH A GHASTLY INAUTHENTIC PHONY PERFORMANCE IN MY LIFE AS THIS SPEECH BY ERIKA,” Kubrick wrote.
Kirk’s video grievances
In the video, Kirk complains: “Our country has become unrecognizable. These people have perverted the truth to the point that they motivated the murder of my husband. They have continuously tried to assassinate the president, and anyone who stands in their way is labeled ‘hateful,’ ‘racist,’ ‘fascist’ and every other trigger word that is grossly dishonest. We want the best for our country; they don’t.
“These people have perverted the truth to the point that they motivated the murder of my husband.”
“This is why Charlie started Turning Point USA in the first place. He didn’t trust the radicalized liberal teachers, and this past Saturday it was a school teacher — of all people a school teacher — that attempted to change our history for the worse with bullets.
“And everyone is asking why I even went to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It was because many of the journalists in that room have attempted to dehumanize me, and I wanted to meet some of them face to face. … Why have a conversation about me when you can have a conversation with me?”
She spoke of “all the slander, the lies and accusations that are out there surrounding my husband’s murder and myself.”
She critiqued those present at the event for appearing to set aside their political differences for one night. But she had positive words for the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the Marine Corps Band that played the National Anthem.
When the event was interrupted by a gunman crashing through security on a different floor, everything stopped and “total chaos ensued,” Kirk said.
She specifically criticized the journalists in the room for “using their phones to find moments to capture for clips.” These journalists were so unaware, she claimed, “they could have accidentally and quite literally filmed themselves being shot. Many of those people have become so desensitized that fight or flight became secondary to the opportunity of putting themselves into the story.”
She railed against the alleged shooter and pointed out again that he was a teacher.
“You have these people who are supposed to be teaching our children the future of this country, and he’s so unhinged that he is able to teach children by day and then attempt to murder the president of the United states by night. And in his manifesto he starts by contextualizing himself by saying ‘I am a citizen of the United States of America.’
“And while we may have big problems with illegal immigration in this country, I have to tell you we have an even bigger problem when it comes to the systemic indoctrination and radicalization of our own citizens. This is what got my husband killed. This is what has led to three legitimate attempts on President Trump’s life. And I can speak firsthand to the unbearable toll that this must take on our First Lady. There has never been a president who has faced this many assassination attempts in America’s entire history.”
Then she went after late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel, who two days before the shooting attempt made a joke on his show about Melania Trump looking like “an expectant widow.” Kimmel later said the joke was based on the 24-year age difference between Donald Trump and Melania Trump.
Kirk echoed other Trump supporters who saw Kimmel’s joke as somehow causing the attempted assassination two days later.
“Just take a minute and ask yourself how would you feel if even just one person made cruel jokes about the attempted murder of your loved one. That is what Jimmy Kimmel did to the First Lady.”
“If you strip someone of their humanity long enough you will arrive at the chilling conclusion that they don’t deserve to exist at all.”
She spoke of a culture that “absorbs disagreement as a form of personal betrayal” and “turns having an opposing viewpoint into a moral crime worthy of punishment.”
And then echoing the claims of moderates and liberals who protest the Trump administration’s cruelty to immigrants and Muslims and others, she declared: “What I’ve realized through all this, truly having lived through quite literal hell these past seven months, if you strip someone of their humanity long enough you will arrive at the chilling conclusion that they don’t deserve to exist at all.”
She then aired her grievances at being the target of news stories and gossip.
“Every morning I wake up to a new headline lying about me,” she said. “I have comedians dressing up in whiteface, people saying I’m not fit to be CEO, and I have Candace Owens claiming I murdered my husband, and the list goes on and on and on. There is a serious epidemic of dehumanization plaguing this country. The most unthinkable tragedies have now become commonplace in our daily headlines and yet the media finds a way to conveniently explain away violence. This is what we’re up against. … None of us can afford to ignore the evil forces working to divide us, to distract us and to pull us apart.”
Prestonwood event
Erika Kirk did not appear at the Prestonwood “Make Heaven Crowded” event Wednesday evening but sent another video greeting shared online by Graham in a separate post on X April 30. He linked to the second video of Kirk wearing a black blouse as in the first one but this time replacing the all-black cap with a tan-colored cap with lettering saying “God, Family, Country.”
In that video, Kirk says, “The devil himself has unleashed all the demons all over the place to hijack this revival” she said had broken out after her husband’s death.
Allie Beth Stuckey
Graham commented: “Even when the noise feels loud and the weight of the moment feels real, we hold on to what we know is true, God is still moving. Last night, Erika reminded us to trust the process, to stay faithful, and to hold the line. Revival isn’t always easy, but it is always worth it. On the other side of the trial is the abundance of God’s grace.”
One of the speakers at the Prestonwood rally was Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative evangelical author, speaker and podcaster who grew up at Prestonwood, a Southern Baptist megachurch in Plano, Texas.
She warned against spiritual compromise and “lack of boldness” and “lack of evangelism” among Christians who are afraid they might offend someone or hurt their feelings.
“It’s not really that you don’t want to be political. It’s not really that you don’t want to be offensive,” she said. “You don’t want to be biblical. It’s not enough for us to just have our private beliefs about how the world works or the gospel but they actually have to impact every single area of our lives. And I see that is something that is missing.”