Before he was killed earlier this month at a speaking event in Utah, one of the most popular video clips featuring Charlie Kirk showed him mocking a college girl for having a wardrobe malfunction. In the clip, a young woman confronts him at one of his ballyhooed “debate” appearances on college campuses. Surrounded by a mob of jeering boys wearing MAGA hats, the girl apologizes and says she’s “very nervous,” and it seems like an accident that her nipple slips out. Temperatures reached a high of 84 degrees that day at the University of Pittsburgh, and she had dressed accordingly, wearing a cropped cami.
But even if she did it on purpose, Kirk’s reaction was disgusting. He rolled out the video on YouTube and his social media channels with headlines that framed the young woman as sexually loose. “SHE TRIES TO FLASH ME!” declared one headline. “Did Hater Try to Flash Charlie Kirk to Get Him Banned on YouTube?” read another.
The headlines were dishonest in another way, though, promising potential viewers that the girl was “wrecked” by Kirk in this “debate.” Anyone who actually listened to what the girl said knows that, on traditional metrics like being right and making sense, she cleaned his clock. She pointed out that it was “silly” that a 30-year-old man was trying pass off yelling at teenagers as “debate.” She called Kirk out for “the way that you edit content and specifically frame it so people look bad talking to you,” which he proceeded to prove by portraying her as a dumb slut, instead of what she clearly was: A smart, brave woman who called Kirk out, despite his vocal mob of supporters.
The video got 10 million views on YouTube, and an untold number across other social media platforms. There was a common response: Almost no one responding engaged with this girl’s points. Most of the commenters were men calling her stupid and lamenting that the “woke” media is ruining women.
The media myth that Kirk was doing politics the “right way” owes everything to pundits who never bothered to look at his actual content. His videos were not about substantive debate. They were just MAGA rage bait. To quote one of his popular tweets, “Who we actually can’t stand are angry, liberal, white women.
The media myth that Kirk was doing politics the “right way” owes everything to pundits who never bothered to look at his actual content. His videos were not about substantive debate. They were just MAGA rage bait. To quote one of his popular tweets, “Who we actually can’t stand are angry, liberal, white women.”
In a more recent video from July, Kirk yelled at a college girl that abortion bans are necessary to force her to “take responsibility for your orgasms.” In another, he sneered at a woman that God is “the father” and she has no right to call God “mother.”
The kids in these videos are often cogent and persuasive, but their words don’t matter to the viewers. The bitter, misogynist audience is there for the provocative visual of the older Kirk looking down on and verbally “owning” supposedly “ruined” women. His empire was built on videos promising sexualized humiliation of liberal women — really, girls — for MAGA men. Reasoned discourse had nothing to do with it.
In the days after Kirk’s killing, his wife Erika has assumed his mantle. On Sept. 18, she was named CEO of Turning Point USA, the conservative youth outreach organization Kirk co-founded in 2012 and led until his assassination.
Erika Kirk has been extraordinarily public with her grief, sharing a video of herself crying as she kisses her dead husband’s hands, giving an interview to the New York Times and making a pair of impassioned speeches, including one on Sunday at Kirk’s televised five-hour memorial service in front of tens of thousands of mourners at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. In all, her social media-oriented mourning has been leveraged to cast her as a reluctant but determined warrior for Christ. So far, it’s been working relatively well. Republicans have been using the deplorable way Kirk was killed to rebrand him as a Christian martyr. “More than anything, Charlie wanted to do not his will, but God’s will,” Erika Kirk said during her husband’s memorial, after her stage entrance was lit with fireworks.
Despite the relentless efforts of MAGA leaders to compare Kirk to Christ, the reality is the son of God didn’t really build his name on video clips promising, with all-caps headlines, that angry misogynists will get to see a grown man mock scantily clad teenage girls. Kirk’s death was ghastly and contemptible, but in a media environment and country conditioned to move on, its shock is already beginning to wear off. To replace her husband, Erika Kirk will have to give the slobbering MAGA masses the same titillating, abrasive content in which her husband specialized.
Frankly, I don’t think she’s up to it.
Right now, MAGA crowds are trying to airbrush Erika Kirk into an anti-feminist icon. In her speech at the memorial, she promoted her husband’s belief in female submission, declaring that “true manhood” means being the “head of your home” and that good women accept their second-class status as a “helper.” She portrayed herself as a housewife who believed a woman’s “most important ministry” is the home. No matter how much your husband is away or how much he prioritizes work over his family, she instructed the crowd, you can’t “make him feel guilty.” The home should instead be a “sacred landing place, away from the worries of the world.” MAGA celebrated this tribute to submissive womanhood, with one viral post declaring Erika Kirk “ended the feminist movement.”
Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Sign up for her free newsletter, Standing Room Only, now also on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
While fully sympathizing with her grief, many women have called Erika Kirk out for not being fully transparent in her self-portrait. Even before her recent ascension to CEO status, she was not a mere housewife, fluffing pillows and waiting faithfully for her husband’s return. Six years older than Kirk, she has a lucrative career of her own, which includes managing a clothing line and hosting a podcast. She also runs a Bible-reading app that is largely focused on selling her Christian-based products.
Such dissembling is normal for female leaders of the MAGA movement, who preach a gospel of housewifery while actually making way more money than many of the feminists they despise. In itself, this duplicity won’t get in the way of Erika Kirk’s rise. No, the real issue for her is that, being female, she can’t sell the gutter misogyny that was one of the main sources of attention and income for her husband.
When Charlie Kirk was still alive, his wife played a valuable role in his brand as a scolder-of-feminists. She was held up as a counterpoint to the supposedly slutty teenage girls he spent his time sneering at for the camera. Because the Turning Point empire was heavy on visuals and light on substance, looking the part was a big part of Erika Kirk’s role. While the young women that would confront Kirk at his faux-debate events often wore shorts or crop shirts, Erika Kirk favored fluffy, pink and floral clothes that were often almost cartoonishly hyper-feminine. Where Kirk’s interlocutors were angry, their faces full of the disgust his male audience members no doubt recognize from their own dealings with women, Erika Kirk presented a fantasy alternative. She was usually photographed gazing adoringly up at her husband, often while gathering their children around her in a beatific — and patriarchal — tableau.
We need your help to stay independent
Erika Kirk’s presence was not as a leader, but as a shield. Her husband doesn’t hate women, the images implied — just the ones that talk back to men. She acted as a softening presence to validate his rancor, a role played by many MAGA wives. Her alleged gentleness made up for his anger. She was Loving Mommy to his Cruel Daddy, there to offer reassurance that Daddy’s bark was stronger than his bite. He might have said hateful things, but she offered Christian prayers — and in MAGA eyes, those wipe the slate clean.
We even saw this dynamic play out during Charlie Kirk’s memorial. To great applause, Erika Kirk said she would “forgive” his killer. Her statement cleared the way for President Donald Trump to come out, moments later, and declare that he “hates” his political opponents and will show them no mercy. With the ladies handling all that love-and-mercy stuff, MAGA men have the space to be even more sociopathic.
Without her husband, Erika Kirk can no longer play the role of the soothing housewife. But it’s also unlikely she can become her husband and make a name for herself yelling at college kids. Charlie Kirk was an aspirational figure for his male audience. They wished they could go on campuses and condescend to cute girls, but they knew — they continue to know — that wouldn’t go well for them. They’d get ignored, mocked or worse, have campus security called on them.
Charlie Kirk, though, had the charisma, money and organization to tilt the field so that he “won” every encounter — even though the kids that approached him usually had better arguments. He offered a fantasy of male domination. His audience will never accept a woman in this fake “alpha male” role.
