Debunking The Erika Kirk Conspiracy Theories

I still remember where I was, and what I was doing, when I heard about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, almost 14 years ago.

It was the second national tragedy in my lifetime — after 9/11 — that left an indelible and permanent mark on the conscience, something you remember for the rest of your days. The two events are not the same in terms of their scale, severity, geopolitical importance, or death toll. But they were so shocking, so morally outrageous, that they imprint themselves somewhere deep in your soul, like a kind of psychological impact crater.

I also remember, just as vividly, the conspiracy theories that almost immediately sprouted up like weeds around the Sandy Hook shooting. Within days of the attack, if not hours, it had been decided by legions of internet commenters and a few prominent right wing personalities — Alex Jones, most famously — that the attack never actually happened. It was staged. A hoax. The government had perpetrated an elaborate ruse, one that apparently involved hundreds of people, including not just government officials but members of the media, and more. The dead children were not actually dead, or maybe never existed. The grieving parents were frauds. Crisis actors playing a role.

None of this was true, of course. There was no evidence to support any of it. But many people apparently believed it anyway. They pointed to “weird” details surrounding the event, and from those data points — if we can call them that — they constructed an entire cinematic universe. The conspiracy theorists said that the initial reports out of the school were inconsistent and contradictory.

There was talk of a second shooter, but then it turned out it was only one shooter. They pointed to other things, like news articles about the shooting with timestamps appearing to show that the articles were published before the event. And most of all, they pointed to the mannerisms of the parents. They circulated clips of the parents smiling, or appearing to chuckle, or behaving in other ways that were deemed strange and inappropriate. Rather than conclude that people respond to grief differently, especially when there are cameras pointed at their faces, the theorists decided that an inappropriately timed smile must be evidence that everything we think we know about the crime isn’t true, and instead their wild competing narrative, for which there was no actual evidence, is true.

In reality, there were reasonable explanations for all of the weird details. Early reports out of mass casualty events are almost always inconsistent. Reports of phantom “second shooters” are extremely common. Time stamps on news articles can be wrong. And people who are grieving sometimes smile. Anyone who’s ever been to a funeral knows that. And at any rate, even if these little tidbits were “unexplained,” even if we all agreed that they were somehow bizarre and troubling, they still wouldn’t prove the conspiracy theory.

Indeed, if Sandy Hook was all a highly coordinated government ruse, then why would they post news articles about it ahead of time? Why would they put out inconsistent information? Why would their paid crisis actors be smiling? As is often the case, the conspiracy theory makes LESS sense of these points than the so-called “official narrative” does. The conspiracy theory does not do the single thing that a legitimate theory is supposed to do, which is to make sense of the facts on the ground. It makes less sense of them. It introduces even more unexplained and unexplainable variables. It takes a well supported narrative with maybe a few holes and replaces it with a new narrative that has ten thousand more holes.

In the case of Sandy Hook, this wild and baseless theorizing was not just an academic exercise. Real children actually died. Real parents were dealing with a trauma beyond comprehension. And now, thanks to the Sandy Hook truthers, they found themselves cast as the villains of the story. It wasn’t enough to suffer the worst tragedy of their lives. Now they also had to deal with being demonized and defamed, for no good reason at all.

I bring all of this up because it reminds me very much, to an almost eery degree, of the third national tragedy that impacted me and many millions of Americans so deeply that we’ll never forget where we were when we heard about it.

That would be the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Just like Sandy Hook, Charlie Kirk’s assassination has become the subject of wild and baseless conspiracy theories. 

And just like Sandy Hook, one of the living victims of this tragedy — in this case Erika Kirk — has become, for no good reason, a target. She has been demonized and defamed. And on the exact same basis. The internet peanut gallery has decided that she smiles at inappropriate times. She rubs them the wrong way. They don’t like her vibes. For that reason she must be the villain of the story, rather than the victim.

What we are finding out is that the internet is like the Matrix. It allows you to construct whatever reality you want for yourself. That’s how the trans craze took hold. That’s every weird subreddit full of bizarre perverts living out their fetishes in the company of other perverts who share the same interests. And it’s what conspiracy theorists do. They marinate in a selectively curated assortment of facts that stitch together whatever story they’re telling themselves — the earth is flat, Sandy Hook was staged, Erika Kirk conspired with a half dozen foreign intelligence agencies to murder her husband and frame a gay furry, etc.

This time around, the chief media personality promoting the alternative version of events is, of course, Candace Owens.

As you may remember, a couple of months ago, I laid out the reasons why, contrary to claims by Candace, it’s clear that Tyler Robinson killed Charlie Kirk. To the extent there was any evidence of a potential conspiracy, it involved the several trans activists who posted messages online that appeared to indicate, at a minimum, that they may have had advance knowledge of the assassination plot. And of course there were the strange text messages between Robinson and his roommate, in which Robinson stated that his roommate had seen him “engraving bullets.” But there was no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Charlie Kirk’s associates, or Erika Kirk or Turning Point USA, or the French government or the Israeli government or the U.S. military, had anything to do with Charlie’s murder.

For months, Candace has stated otherwise.

In October, she wrote this message on X.

With all we have crowdsourced, it looks like a decision to murder Charlie Kirk in Utah was made around July 18th. A military meeting with foreign leaders took place on July 20th on U.S soil. The plane flew into Provo direct from France on September 4th and stayed until just after Charlie was assassinated— flying out to Wilmington on that day. The plane returned home to Egypt the following day on September 11th.

In November, Candace provided the following update.

URGENT Two days ago I was contacted by a high-ranking employee of the French Government. After determining this person’s position and proximity to the French couple, I have deemed the information they gave me to be credible enough to share publicly in the event that something happens. In short, this person claims that the Macrons have executed upon and paid for my assassination. Yes, you read that correctly. … I am told there is one Israeli that is on this assassination squad and the plans were formalized. Again, this person provided concrete proof that they are well placed within the French government apparatus. Further to this point, this person claims that Charlie Kirk’s assassin trained with the French legion 13th brigade with multi-state involvement. … I have more specific information which is definitively verifiable, should they care to reach out to me.

That same month, she posted this message.

Today is going to be a big day. What we will present in the Charlie Kirk investigation is going to change everything.

That is not an exaggeration.

Nothing will be the same.

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 17, 2025

Credit: @RealCandaceO/X.com

In December, Candace followed up with this message on Instagram.

It feels like today will be the day that the government can no longer deny it. Charlie Kirk was assassinated and our military was involved,” Owens wrote. “I can’t wait to share this information with you guys today.

She also wrote the following on X.

I received information last night that put the final pieces together for me.

I now can say with full confidence that I believe Charlie Kirk was betrayed by the leadership of Turning Point USA and some of the very people who eulogized him on stage.

Yes I will be naming names…

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) December 2, 2025

Credit: @RealCandaceO/X.com

Around the same time, Candace interviewed a guy named “Mitch Snow,” who she says she was connected with via email. And Mitch Snow claimed, with 95% certainty, that he saw Charlie Kirk’s head of security, along with Erika Kirk, at a military installation in Arizona right before Charlie was murdered. 

Watch:

Credit: Candace Owens/YouTube.com

That interview has nearly 3 million views. All of the comments that are visible — every single one of them — treats this interview like a bombshell revelation. “Lord have mercy,” one person writes. “Nothing will be the same after this.”

Mitch Snow would later claim on social media that his father was the Zodiac killer. He would also present no corroborating evidence whatsoever for his claim. A claim that even taken at face value makes no sense. If Erika conspired with the US military to kill her husband — for reasons that have yet to be explained — why would she be meeting at a military base in person to discuss it? That’s not how assassinations actually work in real life. And if all of the most powerful forces on Earth were engaged in this kind of plot, it seems highly unlikely that they’d be so sloppy that some random guy named Mitch could blow the whole thing wide open because he just so happened to be walking by at the exact right moment.

So this is a person who is obviously not credible, making wildly implausible claims for which he has no proof. It’s hard not to conclude that this is what’s fueling most of the conspiracy theories. Random people are sending in tips and making claims, and those tips and claims are taken at face value. The problem is that there are a lot of people feeding information to Candace, or posting it online themselves, or sending it to other proponents of the conspiracy theory, and there are a lot of reasons why they might be doing that. One of the possible reasons is that they are sincere, sane, and honest actors, earnestly trying to help crack the case and find Charlie’s real killer. But that is just one possible explanation, and by far not the most likely.

The other reasons why people might be sending tips to Candace, or posting them online is that they’re confused and deluded, or they’re trolls, or they have personal and political grudges that they’re trying to settle.

Candace has said publicly many times that she has informants inside TPUSA. Why might people inside TPUSA be supplying Candace with ammunition against their own organization? Are these honest crusaders for the truth? It’s possible. It’s also extremely possible that these are people with personal grudges and professional ambitions that, they’ve decided, are served by sending Candace after their rivals within the organization.

And on top of all of this, there’s the risk that foreign intelligence agencies are contributing to the maelstrom by feeding bad information. Certainly the temptation for a foreign intelligence agency to jump into the fray and foment further divisions and chaos with bad intel must be very profound. If you think that shadowy foreign governments were involved in Charlie Kirk’s assassination, despite there being no evidence to support such an idea, consider the possibility that shadowy foreign governments could also be involved in creating and fueling false theories about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. If you believe they’d do the former then you must believe they’d do the latter.

The point here is that any “evidence” that is based entirely on unverified tips and unverified claims from random sources cannot actually be taken, on its own, as evidence of anything. There are too many other potential reasons why these parties may be involving themselves.

But I have already explained in detail why I think Tyler Robinson did in fact kill Charlie Kirk. Not at the behest of TPUSA or any foreign government or our government, but instead moved by his own left wing, pro-trans radicalism. Trans radicals are murdering people in this country constantly. There is nothing at all surprising or implausible about the idea that they also killed Charlie Kirk. You can go back and watch that episode to hear the case laid out.

Today I want to focus on the increasingly aggressive and single-minded attacks on Erika Kirk specifically. As you may have seen, last night Candace debuted a new “investigative series” called “The Bride of Charlie,” which purports to tell us the sinister truth about Erika. This of course didn’t come out of nowhere. For weeks now, Candace has openly suggested that Erika may have committed a crime in connection with her husband’s murder.

For example, here was Candace a couple of weeks ago, stating that the police should detain Erika and subject her to interrogation:

Credit: Candace Owens/YouTube.com

But as we’ll see, there isn’t enough evidence to justify dragging her into a police precinct, much less charging her with a crime, much less convicting her. There isn’t any evidence — actual, positive evidence — that Erika has committed any crime, or covered up any crime, or had any involvement in any crime, to include, especially, the crime of murdering her husband. That’s why, although the innuendos about Erika may be compelling fodder for YouTube videos, they would not be compelling to a grand jury or a prosecutor or a judge.

If you took everything that’s been said about Erika, or implied, and tried to present it as evidence in a court of law, you would be laughed out of the room. There is no case here. There is no evidence of anything.

These attacks on Erika by Candace, and by everyone else engaged in this campaign, are wrong. Deeply, desperately wrong. Wrong morally and factually. They are wrong morally because they are wrong factually.

The whole crux of the matter here is not just that Erika is a grieving widow but that she is innocent of the accusations that are being made, or implied, against her. The point is not that, hey, Erika may have killed her husband, or been involved in it, or covered it up, but we should take it easy on her because she’s a grieving widow. The point is that Erika didn’t do any of that, and there is absolutely no evidence that she did any of that — no evidence, at all, period. 

Defaming anyone with untrue accusations is very bad, but defaming a widow — the grieving wife of a man that we all say we loved and admired — is unspeakably, horrifically bad. 

Most of Candace’s critics have responded to her latest episode, and every other episode over the past several months, by shouting angrily, calling her evil, and just leaving it at that. I understand why people are emotional. But if there is any hope of saying anything that makes any kind of difference — that actually succeeds in cutting through the noise and persuading anyone to back away from these grandiose and baseless conjectures — then it’s going to require that we deal with the claims being made and address them head on.

Shouting insults at each other across the void will not actually accomplish anything. It is cathartic. It is not useful.

So let’s begin with the first episode of Candace’s new series, “Bride of Charlie.” At no point in this episode, which ran roughly an hour long, did Candace present evidence of any misconduct by Erika Kirk — much less evidence that she had any connection to Charlie’s murder.

Instead, we were given a demonstration as to why courtrooms have “rules of evidence.” In particular, she demonstrated why evidence has to be relevant before it’s presented to a jury. Otherwise, you get a barrage of irrelevant details, all with vague insinuations of guilt that don’t actually mean anything. 

For 50 minutes, Candace delved into the backstory of Erika’s family, pointing out that, for example, some of them were involved in gambling. There seems to be the vague suggestion that these details are sinister, but it was never explained why. And even if they are, even if Erika comes from a weird family or a bad family — and I have no reason to think that’s the case — it wouldn’t prove anything relevant about Erika herself. You could tell me that Erika’s mother was a serial killer and her father was a terrorist and it wouldn’t move us one inch in the direction of proving that Erika has done anything wrong, or been involved in her husband’s murder in any way.

Candace began the episode by reading a lengthy tweet from someone named “Elizabeth Lane.” Lane says that Erika is a “Hillary Clinton” type figure who married Charlie in order to get ahead in life — until it all fell apart.

Watch:

Credit: Candace Owens/YouTube.com

This tweet has something like 10 million views, and Candace obviously thinks it’s compelling, as a way of suggesting that Erika had some motive to be unhappy with Charlie, and to want to replace him.

“The life she appears to have signed up for — power couple, expanding influence, historical relevance, was collapsing into something else entirely.”

This is not how Charlie would describe himself, because he was modest. But if Charlie and Erika were not a political “power couple,” then no couple qualifies as a “power couple.” Charlie was one of the top-three outside advisers with a direct line to the president. He hosted pretty much all of the president’s events from Butler to the election, and obviously played a major role in Trump’s victory. He could influence legislation and executive action with a phone call. And based on the massive receptions he was getting on college campuses, and his fundraising efforts, Charlie was a legitimate contender to be the president of the United States one day — probably sooner than most people think. The idea that Erika saw all of this, and concluded that her allegedly selfish dreams of being famous and important were slipping away, is complete nonsense.

But even if you accept the premise that this Elizabeth Lane character has the mind reading abilities she apparently ascribes to herself, still this would not constitute evidence of anything.

Let’s say that Erika is a psychotic social climber, interested only in fame and fortune. She’s not. I work in media. I know a lot of people like that. She’s not one of them. But even if she were, so what?

Imagine calling the police with this bit of “evidence.” Imagine telling them that they need to come and arrest Erika Kirk right away in connection with the murder of her husband. Why? Well because it seems like she’s a really shallow and superficial person. What police department on the face of the planet would send the squad cars over to Erika’s house and frog march her in leg irons in front of cameras on that basis?

But let’s continue, and see if we’re presented anything that could be considered probable cause:

Credit: Candace Owens/YouTube.com

None of this leads anywhere. She finds a couple of clerical errors on a divorce filing involving Erika Kirk’s parents, including Erika’s birthdate. And from that, we’re supposed to conclude — what exactly?

Notice the way that information was framed. You’re led to believe that random divorce filings in random courthouses are always perfectly correct, and never modified in this fashion. But there’s no proof of that. If she wanted to she could’ve had a local expert come on, and give his impression of these documents, and what they might mean. But that doesn’t happen. And if it did, she’d likely be told that clerical errors are not unusual at all. Instead, Candace simply states that it is IS unusual, and that you should draw some unknown conclusion from this information.

Again, this is why, in the legal system, irrelevant evidence isn’t introduced. It’s not simply a way to save time. The main reason that we exclude irrelevant evidence is that, when you present a mountain of evidence, people in general want to believe that it leads somewhere. They don’t want to stop and ask the question, “Hey, what’s the point of this?”

Instead, they assume that the lawyers, and the more knowledgeable people in the courtroom, are introducing the evidence for a reason. It must prove guilt in some way, even if it’s hard to see how. People draw inferences that aren’t actually supported by the facts. So to prevent that from happening, irrelevant evidence isn’t allowed.

Unflattering but irrelevant information about a suspect is considered prejudicial, because it prejudices the jury against the suspect, giving them a negative impression, which makes them more likely to convict even if there is insufficient evidence of the crime the suspect is accused of committing. That’s what a lot of this stuff is. It’s prejudicing the jury — in this case, the jury in the court of public opinion — against Erika, even without proving that she committed the crime that she is, by insinuation at least, being accused of.

There’s a lot of other irrelevant evidence.

The problem is that you could do this to anyone. You could relentlessly dig up old photos and social media posts and legal documents and find minor inconsistencies that have no relevance to anything, and present them as a part of a nefarious plot. You could dig into anyone’s life and find embarrassing things, weird things, inconsistent things. You could dig into anyone’s family and find all kinds of weirdness. Find me a person who claims to not have a weird family and I’ll show you a person who apparently doesn’t know their family very well, or more likely is lying. But again this is all innuendo. It doesn’t prove anything. It’s not evidence of anything.

To be fair, in recent episodes of her show, Candace has relied less on innuendo, and more on direct accusations. Her series about Erika is ongoing, and some of the stuff from her previous episodes might give us a clue as to where the current series is headed.

So let’s take a look:

Credit: Candace Owens/YouTube.com

Actually, it makes perfect sense to me. There’s nothing unusual about anything in that interview.

But let’s see what Candace says about it:

Credit: Candace Owens/YouTube.com

So Charlie couldn’t have been excited about the start of his fall campus tour, even though he’d be greeted by thousands of fans, and clearly enjoyed getting out of the studio. There’s nothing weird about the fact that Charlie enjoyed doing his life’s work. It’s also perfectly consistent with everything I saw from him personally. He was always amped and excited at any event where I saw him.

And as for toddlers waking up at 3:00AM, I have a toddler right now who wakes up in the middle of the night almost every night. In fact every one of our six children have gone through phases like that. It’s the most normal thing in the world. So there’s simply no reason at all to think that she lied about this. And even if you think she did lie, still — and maybe you’re sensing a theme here — it wouldn’t be evidence of any crime.

She goes on to talk about Charlie’s wedding ring. 

I mentioned before how these kinds of conspiracy theories not only draw unsupported conclusions based on irrelevant and sometimes imaginary details, but that the theories actually make less sense of the irrelevant details. We see that again here. If Erika is a criminal mastermind who’s managed to avoid detection for her nefarious plots then why would she also confess, live on primetime television, to numerous incriminating details for no reason whatsoever?

She didn’t have to mention anything about the wedding ring (which, by the way, many men take off at night).

She didn’t have to mention anything about the bed that Charlie slept in, or the toddler waking up. But Erika slipped up, apparently, and revealed all of these incriminating details because, in all her sinister planning, she couldn’t think of a good cover story. If Erika is hiding some sinister truth, none of her behavior makes sense. She’d be doing the opposite of what she’s actually doing in real life.

Candace goes on to claim Erika is “exceedingly uncomfortable describing Charlie’s final day.”

Well, that again makes perfect sense to me. She’s uncomfortable describing the last day that her husband was alive on this Earth. I think I would be, too, in her shoes. This is another common theme. Things that are perfectly understandable and normal are recast as ominous and bizarre. For example, Erika has frequently been criticized for not announcing the exact location of her husband’s burial site. The implication, again, is that she’s hiding some dark secret. But the much more reasonable and plausible and totally understandable explanation is that she doesn’t want leftists showing up and defacing her husband’s grave, which we all know they would do. And she doesn’t want random deranged people showing up and trying to exhume his body so that they can conduct their own unofficial forensic analysis, which would also probably happen. So again, we have no evidence of any crime at all, least of all the crime of conspiring to kill her husband.

But by far the number one piece of evidence against Erika — the thing that really got the conspiracy theories rolling, and which fuels them even now — is the same thing that put the Sandy Hook parents in the crosshairs. It’s Erika’s general demeanor in public. Her facial expressions. What she wears. It’s definitely not just Candace drawing sinister conclusions based on Erika’s wardrobe and body language. It’s all over the internet.

The Daily Mail even published this headline this week: “As Erika Kirk FINALLY comes out of hiding at State of the Union, shock new exposé plagues ‘giggling’ widow… who can’t shake questions over her tears and THOSE leather pants.”

It’s strange that Erika is accused of being in hiding. She’s also accused of being too public, too hungry for the spotlight. So somehow she’s guilty of being too visible and not visible enough, at the exact same time.

I’ve never seen anyone in my life who has been put in such a morbidly absurd lose-lose situation.

If Erika laughs, she’s criticized for not crying.

If she cries, her tears are fake.

If she’s out in public, she should be home grieving.

If she’s home grieving, she should stop hiding and come out in public.

If she laughs, she’s a cruel unfeeling psychopath. If she frowns, she’s an icy, scheming villain.

Literally no matter what she does, what she says, how she looks, what facial expression she displays, it is used as evidence against her.

Look at this tweet from the news outlet RT:

Erika Kirk’s SOTU demeanor goes viral

Commenters on social media argued Charlie Kirk’s widow was acting ‘weird’, ‘fake’ and ‘performative’ at the State of the Union address

Do you spot anything strange? pic.twitter.com/l4kCOHPRdQ

— RT (@RT_com) February 25, 2026

Credit: @RT_com/X.com

The answer is no, I don’t spot anything strange. She’s just sitting there. What do you want her to do?

At some points she looks like she’s getting emotional. At other points she smiles in response to something Trump says from the podium. She looks up. She looks down. What do you want? What is the precise facial expression that Erika Kirk is supposed to have? Maybe one of her critics can show us. Go ahead and prescribe for Erika exactly what her face is supposed to look like at all times.

This is completely ridiculous. We are at the point now where Erika’s facial expressions are being judged on a second by second basis. People are parsing the slightest move of an eyebrow and looking for evidence of something sinister. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that nobody in history has ever been subjected to this intense level of scrutiny, so much that they literally cannot smile or use a tissue without 10 thousand people on the internet attacking them in the most ruthless and uncharitable terms possible. I have never seen anything like it.

I’ve heard it argued, by Candace and many others, that Erika has put herself in line for his level of scrutiny by assuming the role of CEO. Now I’m not sure why a person becoming CEO of an organization inherently justifies ripping their life apart. I’m no aware of any other CEO in history who’s ever been subjected to anything like this. It seems more that her becoming CEO offers a pretense for the criticism, not a necessary reason for them. And in any case, even if becoming CEO makes her a candidate for increased scrutiny, it doesn’t lower the evidentiary bar for everyone else before accusing her of nefarious crimes, or implying that she’s guilty of them. Her becoming CEO does not give anyone moral license to make wild and defamatory speculations about her. And anyway, her decision to become CEO is not surprising. It certainly isn’t scandalous. Wanting to keep a man’s life work in the family, to preserve his legacy, is an understandable instinct, and a very conservative one.

Now, as to her behavior, I personally don’t think that she’s been acting strange at all. But if you do, then here’s your explanation — not that Erika owes you one. Any human being under that much scrutiny, in a situation this traumatic and terrible, would behave “strangely.” Indeed I don’t even know what a normal reaction would be. This is not a normal circumstance. We have no frame of reference for it. Our only frame of reference is how private people, mourning much less public deaths, behave. And even based on that comparison — a comparison which is not entirely fair to Erika — still her behavior is wholly understandable. Grieving people often laugh. They smile. They try to compartmentalize their grief and carry on, hiding their trauma as best they can. That’s what Erika is clearly doing. And she’s doing it while trying her best to carry on her husband’s legacy and life’s work, which is what she feels called to do. Again, that is not difficult for a reasonable person to understand.

But all of this is irrelevant. Even if you don’t like how she acts, or the pants she wears, or her facial expressions, or anything else, you have no actual evidence-based reason to think that she is guilty of committing any crime. And if she isn’t guilty of a crime, then all you are doing is nitpicking a widow, which is every bit like critiquing the color of someone’s nail polish while you watch them drown in the ocean and make no attempt to help. Yes, maybe she made an odd choice of nail polish that day. She’s also drowning. That would seem to be the more salient fact. It’s interesting to note that Tyler Robinson is not subjected to even a fraction of the public scrutiny, even though all of the evidence — literally all of the evidence — points to him. There is no evidence connecting Erika to the crime. All of the evidence we do have — every bit of it — connects Tyler Robinson to it. And yet for some reason he is not the subject of public scorn. Instead it all goes to the widow of the man he killed.

So, I’ve laid out the argument. I’ve made the case. I’ve explained as thoroughly and systematically as I can why Candace’s “investigation” into Erika is not based in fact.

Having done that, I’d like to now, merely as epilogue, speak on a more emotional and personal level for a moment. I admit that I have a certain advantage when it comes to assessing Erika’s actions and motives. I’ve spoken to her multiple times since Charlie died. You don’t need to know her or speak to her to understand that the accusations and insinuations against her are utterly without merit. You don’t need to know her or speak to her to understand that there is no legitimate reason, no evidence, to justify treating her with anything but compassion and sympathy. You don’t need to know her or speak to her to understand the Biblical mandate to be kind to widows.

But if you did speak to her, you would see, clear as day, that this woman is completely devastated, broken into a thousand pieces, by this tragedy. She is shattered. She is crushed. And now, already grief-stricken and gutted, she must deal with public scorn, mockery, and defamation unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life, much less experienced myself. If you are worried that she isn’t sad enough. Fear not. I can report: she is sad. She is very, very sad. If for some perverse reason it makes you feel better to know that, well now you do.

The other thing you notice if you talk to her in real life is that she is a real person, dealing with a real thing. Everyone else on the internet has the benefit of treating this whole thing like a game. A piece of content you watch and then scroll past. You engage with this story in bits and pieces, here and there. I’m talking about it right now as an episode of my podcast. Candace has done many episodes about it. Erika lives with it every second of every day. This is her life. It’s not a game for her. It’s not content. It’s her life. I have talked about how deeply Charlie’s death affected me, and it did. I was changed by it. And not for the better, I’m sorry to say. I’m an angrier person now. I’ll admit that. But I also recognize that, even in the immediate aftermath of his death, I could still put my phone down, turn off the TV, try to take my mind off the tragedy, and go spend time with my family. With my wife, who is alive. And my children who are happy and safe with two parents who love them. I have that luxury. So does Candace.

Erika does not. When I was trying to take my mind off of things, do you know what Erika was doing? She was explaining to her young children that their daddy will never be coming home. Do you know what that’s like? Have you ever had to have a conversation like that? I haven’t. I pray I never do. And every night since that day, while I am happily at home with my family, and Candace is with hers, Erika is home with two children who are suffering a trauma they’re far too young to process, while she carries a grief that most of us can’t comprehend, and all the while she is gleefully ripped to pieces by hordes of people who can’t muster even the faintest shred of sympathy.

Will anything I’m saying right now change that? Will it make any difference at all? I don’t know. Probably not.

Is it likely to persuade Candace or any of her fans or anyone else who’s been attacking Erika? That’s unlikely, perhaps. I can always hope.

There’s a debate on the Right about the best way to defend Charlie’s family and legacy through all of this. Is it better to starve the conspiracy theories of attention, deprive them of oxygen? Or should we focus on them intently? Should we scream and shout and get angry? Or should we approach the issue objectively and offer a dispassionate rebuttal? I’ve argued with myself about this. I don’t know the answer. All I know is that Erika Kirk is a victim, not a culprit or a conspirator. She doesn’t deserve any of this. What she deserves is sympathy, and a little bit of grace. And if we really loved and admired Charlie, then extending that basic level of decency to his wife is the least we can do.