On the day the country remembers the legendary Charlie Kirk, we learn new details of how Erika Kirk feels about the death of her husband and the assassin who killed him.
In short, she sees divine logic in Charlie’s death and doesn’t want the blood of the assassin, a lost soul, on her ledger:
As Ms. Kirk prepares for Mr. Kirk’s funeral on Sunday, when Mr. Trump and nearly every other major conservative figure is expected to sanctify her husband, she has her own mortal preoccupations.
Beyond the grief, she said, sometimes she is able “to see the Bible in such technicolor. To be so serene in saying, ‘Thy will be done. I surrender to it.’ Do I like it? No. That was the love of my life, my soul mate, my best friend. But God’s plan is always greater than ours.”
Like other Christians at Turning Point, she said she sees a divine logic to Mr. Kirk’s death: a young prophet whose fleeting life has achieved lasting resonance after his martyrdom. While others seek out conspiracies beyond the death of Mr. Kirk at the hands of a lone gunman, Ms. Kirk is not among them.
In her view, a young but towering spiritual voice was silenced by a young lost soul. “I’m a strong believer that this was God’s plan,” she said. “And it’s so clear-cut. It couldn’t be more Charlie.”
She added, “I’ve had so many people ask, ‘Do you feel anger toward this man? Like, do you want to seek the death penalty?’ I’ll be honest. I told our lawyer, I want the government to decide this. I do not want that man’s blood on my ledger. Because when I get to heaven, and Jesus is like: ‘Uh, eye for an eye? Is that how we do it?’ And that keeps me from being in heaven, from being with Charlie?”
The interview also reveals that Erika Kirk was no there with her husband when he was shot. Rather, she was at the hospital with her mother in Phoenix:
On the evening before Mr. Kirk traveled to Utah, he and his wife met for dinner in the Phoenix area with a friend who was a faith leader. The purpose was to pray together over Mr. Kirk’s imminent tour of roughly 20 campuses. Both Ms. Kirk and the friend were worried.
Mr. Kirk, whose appearances on college campuses drew ardent support and fierce condemnation, had received numerous death threats over the past year and had been traveling with a security team for months. Over dinner, Ms. Kirk implored her husband to start wearing a bulletproof vest. When he demurred, the friend suggested that Mr. Kirk speak behind bulletproof glass.
“Not yet,” Mr. Kirk replied. He said he felt confident in his team, and that there would be additional security at the Utah event. But Ms. Kirk, like several of her husband’s subordinates, had occasionally heard him imply that his life could be cut short by violence. She found herself wondering if a part of him had already surrendered to such a prospect.
It had been Ms. Kirk’s plan to accompany her husband to Utah. But her mother would be undergoing medical treatment in the Phoenix area that same day. “Home needs you,” Mr. Kirk told her. They agreed that she would instead travel with him on the next leg of the tour, to Colorado State University.
Ms. Kirk was sitting in her mother’s hospital room at 11:23 a.m. local time in Phoenix when she saw the number of her husband’s longtime assistant, Michael McCoy, appear on her phone. In retrospect, she said she knew the words — “He’s been shot!” — before Mr. McCoy screamed them.
Mr. Robinson had texted his partner about Mr. Kirk after the shooting. “I’ve had enough of his hatred,” he wrote, according to court papers.
Mr. Kirk’s chartered plane traveled back to Scottsdale to ferry his wife to Provo. He was pronounced dead as she was airborne. “I’m looking at the clouds and the mountains,” Ms. Kirk recalled of those surreal hours. “It was such a gorgeous day, and I was thinking: This is exactly what he last saw.”
The sheriff met her in the hospital. He offered her the option of seeing the body but, she said, advised against it. The bullet, he explained, had ravaged Mr. Kirk’s neck.
“With all due respect,” Ms. Kirk remembered saying, “I want to see what they did to my husband.”
She was braced for the worst, but what she saw surprised her. “His eyes were semi-open,” Ms. Kirk said. “And he had this knowing, Mona Lisa-like half-smile. Like he’d died happy. Like Jesus rescued him. The bullet came, he blinked, and he was in heaven.”
She had not been able to kiss him goodbye when he left the house earlier that morning. She did so then.
Lastly – and this isn’t from the interview – we learned last night the reason why no one was killed who stood behind Kirk in Utah and it’s nothing short of miraculous.
From TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet:
I want to address some of the discussion about the lack of an exit wound with Charlie. I’m usually not interested in delving into most of this kind of online chatter, and I apologize this is somewhat graphic, but in this case, the fact that there wasn’t an exit wound is probably another miracle, and I want people to know.
I just spoke with the surgeon who worked on Charlie in the hospital…
He said the bullet “absolutely should have gone through, which is very very normal for a high powered, high velocity round. I’ve seen wounds from this caliber many times and they always just go through everything. This would have taken a moose or two down, an elk, etc.”
But it didn’t go through. Charlie’s body stopped it.
I mentioned to his doctor that there were dozens of staff, students, and special guests standing directly behind Charlie on the other side of the tent, and he replied:
“It was an absolute miracle that someone else didn’t get killed.”
“His bone was so healthy and the density was so so impressive that he’s like the man of steel. It should have just gone through and through. It likely would have killed those standing behind him too.”
In the end, the coroner did find the bullet just beneath the skin.
Even in death, Charlie managed to save the lives of those around him.
Remarkable. Miraculous.