‘I would much rather our country look like this room’: Erika Kirk reflects on Robinson hearing

SALT LAKE CITY — After spending a week in a Provo, Utah, courtroom for the preliminary hearing of Tyler Robinson, the 23-year-old accused of killing her husband, Erika Kirk stood in front of thousands of similarly aged Americans telling them they have a choice.

“I just want to encourage you how important your choices are,” Kirk said at the close of Turning Point USA’s Chapter Leadership Summit on Sunday. “Lazy people attract lazy people. Driven and motivated people attract driven and motivated people. So every day you have a choice, just like that man that was in the courtroom who murdered my husband.”

 

Her husband, Charlie Kirk, co-founded the nonprofit organization Turning Point USA in 2012. Following his death last September, Erika Kirk was named CEO, and has since been no stranger to online criticism of her every move.

But she told her audience on Sunday that she doesn’t let it faze her.

“Throughout this whole time, I have had so many people ask, ‘Why are you doing this?'”

She continued, “When you have commitments, especially those that your loved one has made, you follow through on them, and it doesn’t matter how hard it is, doesn’t matter how tough life is, you gave your word, and between my husband and I, our word is our bond.”

She encouraged the young TPUSA leaders to keep showing up, to have conversations with those they disagree with and to be courageous.

Regarding the weeklong court proceedings, Kirk said she was still processing the evidence she had seen.

On the final day of the proceedings, 4th District Judge Tony Graf allowed an enhanced compilation of security footage to be played to the gallery but not to the media, after the Kirk family’s legal counsel pushed for all the evidence to be made public.

The footage showed a man lying on the roof of Utah Valley University’s Losee Center, then getting up to run in the opposite direction, where he jumped off the roof and fled the scene.

As Erika Kirk watched the footage, she began to cry.

“This past week, I have seen something I’m still trying to unpack and put into words,” she said.

When asked if she still wanted to go to the leadership summit, she knew she would, but what solidified her decision, she said, was, “I would much rather our country look like this room than the inside of that courtroom. So that means having hard conversations.”

“You do the hard thing. You do the right thing, and that’s what my husband did every single day. Every day, and that’s what you guys do every day,” Kirk added. “You all flew here from across the country. I can take a plane too to be here after I’ve been through hell this past week.”