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Erika Kirk’s Freudian slip just gave the ‘grift’ away

Erika Kirk is the widow of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was murdered in September this year. Having taken over his position as the head of Turning Point USA, she spoke at their conference this week.

Founded by Charlie Kirk in 2012, Turning Point USA is a non-profit organisation which seeks to – in its own words – “identify, educate, train and organize students“. Others consider it to be an astroturfed pipeline to the right which is financed by wealthy donors and run by conniving con men. That’s why the following Freudian slip from Erika Kirk was so interesting:

Here’s what she said (emphasis added):

Despite the devastating loss of Charlie Kirk, my incredible husband at UVU, Caleb has persisted with the same grift, excuse me, gift, grit. It has been a long day. Trust me, you’re not a grifter, honey. It’s all good.

The only word that appears to have come easily was ‘grift’, which we think speaks volumes, especially given her panic to try and repair her ‘error’.

Erika Kirk: keeping it in the family

Speaking to the idea that the late Charlie Kirk was a grifter, the Medium essayist Fazer Domino wrote:

They sold you a legend: the unshakeable mind, the campus conqueror, the “titan of debate.”

But legends are for bedtime. In daylight, the truth is simpler:

Charlie Kirk wasn’t a titan. He was a grifter.

…

Here’s the hustle: stage a confrontation, force a false binary, drown the room in buzzwords, clip 60 seconds, upload “DESTROYED” in all caps, and sell the feeling of victory to people who don’t care if it was real.

That’s not debate. That’s content manufacturing.

No one “wins” these spectacles. One side posts WE CRUSHED THEM, the other posts NO, WE DID. The scoreboard isn’t logic. It’s views.

Increasingly, people think Charlie wasn’t the only grifter in the family:

 

The below is a paraphrase rather than a direct quote, but it does summarise how people think Erika Kirk is using her ‘grief’ to launder the reputation of her political allies:

At the Turning Point conference, Erika Kirk also announced her support for JD Vance becoming president in 2028:

This was her with Vance a mere month after an assassin gunned down her husband:

Oh, and there was another Freudian slip at the event by the way – this one involving Nicki Minaj and JD Vance:

Some conspiracists literally think that Erika Kirk was involved in her husband’s murder by the way, so yucking it up like this isn’t going to help dismiss that. Most of these conspiracists are on the right, by the way, although less extreme right-wingers like Tim Dillon are also taking issue with her performance:

We will say this about Erika Kirk; she’s been a real ‘gift’ to people who want to criticise Turning Point USA.

Featured image via Sky

By Maddison Wheeldon

This post was originally published on Canary.