Spin Cycle: They Really Can’t Help It, Can They? CNN, MSNBC Praise Erika Kirk Eulogy To Attack Trump
Commentators at CNN and MSNBC — both left-leaning networks — appeared to break form for just a few seconds in praising the new CEO of Turning Point USA, Erika Kirk, as she eulogized her late husband Charlie Kirk.
For those who don’t spend their Sunday mornings glued to the television — and their Sunday afternoons attempting to dig through a week’s worth of network and cable news media spin — The Daily Wire has compiled a short summary of what you may have missed.
The life of Charlie Kirk, conservative commentator and TPUSA founder, was celebrated on Sunday just 11 days after his public assassination at a Utah Valley University campus event, and his newly-widowed wife Erika gave a eulogy that brought much of America to tears, offering forgiveness to the suspected assassin who’d robbed her of a husband and her two young children of their father.
After noting that Charlie’s heart was truly in the fight to “save young men just like the one who took his life,” she added, ““That young man, that young man. On the cross, our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ That man, that young man, I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and is what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know, from the Gospel, is love and always love.”
WATCH:
Erika Kirk forgives the man who murdered her husband:
“My husband Charlie…he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life…that young man…
I forgive him.
I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do.” pic.twitter.com/Pd1yGRMRVw
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) September 21, 2025
The response to Ms. Kirk’s speech was overwhelming, crossing party lines and blowing away liberal and progressive commentators even on networks like CNN and MSNBC.
NBC White House correspondent Vaughn Hillyard responded to the speech on MSNBC, saying, “I think what honestly I’ll take away from tonight is watching the weight of a woman, a mother, lose her husband. Most people cannot say they’ve experienced losing a spouse at this young of an age, and I don’t know who we are to suggest how somebody should respond in real time. One week after her husband’s passing, she went in front of a crowd of 40 to 50,000 people, people watching all over the world. And she delivered remarks in which she forgave the assassin that shot her husband and killed him.”
“A remarkable moment because in so many ways, where America stands in 2025 is, how do we respond going forward? And the woman that just lost her husband stood there in front of the world and said, ‘I forgive,'” Hillyard added.
WATCH:
TFW you’re blown away by Erika Kirk’s remarks but HAVE to feed TDS brainworms to your MSNBC audience pic.twitter.com/GxytM7hOzh
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 21, 2025
But the conversation did not stop there, as Ayman Mohideen jumped in to also praise Ms. Kirk — but he used her speech to attack President Trump for taking a different route.
“So, when you weave all of that into a eulogy and in a moment where the country is in sorrow and in pain because of what just happened, there is that split screen. There is that disconnect between the grief that a mother who is just going to bury her husband, the father of her children, and a president who’s talking about the the politics of this moment,” Mohideen said.
“And I think that’s what my takeaway was from that speech, you know, the opportunity for the president to try to heal and bring the country, as many had hoped he would, and not doing it in the way that many people would expect a president to do,” he complained.
On CNN, Xochitl Hinojosa — who served as communications director for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) — said that Erika Kirk’s words could unite Americans across party lines. But she had to preface that assessment with a comparison to Trump, who she argued had not done that.
“I think in times like this, especially when there is political violence, you need the president, regardless of who it is, to bring the country together. And that has not happened,” she said.
“This was an opportunity for Trump to do that. He did not take that opportunity. The person who really did that was Erika Kirk. She came to the moment — she understood that people need to be brought together. She’s probably one of the only people besides Donald Trump who could do that. So much that she says … that she forgave the shooter. She also said, ‘The answer to hate is not hate,'” Hinojosa said.
“She talked about love for our enemies. She talked about the First Amendment and the importance of the First Amendment. These are all things that should have come, you know, largely about bringing our country together, from our president,” she said again. “But instead it came from the widow of Charlie Kirk, which I think is, I mean, I don’t know how she did it. First of all, giving that speech, but also rising to the moment when our country needs leadership, when our country needs to hear those messages of coming together. It was the widow who did it.”
