Erika Kirk can't keep Charlie's audience [View all]

Don’t worry — Erika Kirk will never replace her husband
She can't replicate his brand of gutter misogyny

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published September 24, 2025 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) 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.

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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.”

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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. ......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/09/24/dont-worry-erika-kirk-will-never-replace-her-husband/