On Sunday, I had the privilege and the honor of attending the memorial for Charlie Kirk that was held in Arizona. It was an overwhelming event, an unbelievable event. The stadium at which it was held was packed with roughly 65,000 people. There was an overflow arena with another 20,000 people, and it was packed.

It was essentially a worship service, an enormous amount of outreach to people, telling them that they ought to embrace faith.

As I’ve been saying for years, there ought to be a religious revival in this country. The fact that there was so much focus on Christianity — which, of course, is something that Charlie lived for and something that he wanted to leave as his legacy — is a good thing for the country.

We are starting to see an uptick in young people going to church. That was happening before Charlie’s death, partially as a result of the work Charlie was doing out there in the world, but also because an emptiness has settled into the heart of Western civilization because it has forgotten about its relationship with God.

If Charlie’s death can be a turning point back toward faith for a lot of young people, that would be an amazing thing.

I don’t think that you have to be a Christian, which I am not, to believe that an America that is more deeply ensconced and deeply rooted in faith is a better America. An America where more people go to church is going to be a stronger America. An America where people believe in Biblical values will be a better and stronger America.

The event that moved everyone the most, that really shattered everyone, was Erika Kirk’s speech. She’s truly a strong, amazing person. She is a woman who is deeply in touch with her faith at the deepest possible level, and that’s what she spoke about yesterday. It was incredibly moving, truly one of the greatest speeches I think I’ve ever seen.

She spoke about what it means to be married, what the Bible calls for us to do as husbands and wives, and what Charlie was trying to do by reaching out to young men.

The audience was trying to reach out to her with their love to uplift her in this moment of darkness for her and for her family. You could feel the love in the arena.

On stage, in front of 100 million people, she forgave the assassin of her husband, truly an act of spiritual courage. It’s hard to think of anything more powerful than what Erika did.

I don’t think she meant that, as a society, we ought to ignore sin, or that his murderer shouldn’t be punished to the fullest extent of the law and receive the death penalty. I think she was saying something very different. She was saying that as all human beings are sinners, all human beings require forgiveness for their sins, which is an amazing thing to say for a young wife who has been left with two small children.

She spoke of the fact that after her husband’s assassination, his death did not drive mass violence in the streets; it drove prayer. Her statements on marriage were quite wonderful; she talked about how a man and a wife are supposed to relate to one another, that the man’s job is to be a protector and a provider, and a wife’s should be a helper, in the sense that they are one unit.

The president of the United States was the last person to speak, and it was classic Trump. He took the stage after Erika Kirk and proceeded to just be himself. After Erika had forgiven Charlie’s killer — which does not mean on a public policy level that there ought not be consequences for murder or that Erika Kirk believes that the murderer should be released or anything idiotic like that — President Trump stated he didn’t believe the same thing. He said of Charlie, “He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry. I am sorry, Erika. But now Erika can talk to me and the whole group, and maybe they can convince me that that’s not right. But I can’t stand my opponent.”

President Trump also went after the Left. It was not a call for unity from President Trump. And I think that to a certain extent, that was fitting. It’s very difficult to unify with people who wish to kill you, as Vice-President JD Vance has said before.

Then President Trump got truly serious. He said that Charlie’s murder was an attack on the country. He said:

Every single American should take a long, hard look at the twisted soul and dark spirit of anyone who would want to kill a young man as good as Charlie, to kill anybody. but to kill a man like this. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve this. Our country didn’t deserve this. And anyone who would make excuses for it are just out of their mind.

Charlie’s murder was not just an attack on one man or one movement. It was an attack on our entire nation. That was a horrible attack on the United States of America. It was an assault on our most sacred liberties and God-given rights. The gun was pointed at him, but the bullet was aimed at all of us. That bullet was aimed at every one of us. Indeed, Charlie was killed for expressing the very ideas that virtually everyone in this arena and most other places throughout our country deeply believed in. But the assassin failed in his quest because Charlie’s message has not been silenced. It now is bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and it’s not even close.

President Trump’s speech culminated with the singing of “America the Beautiful.” Erika came back on stage, and President Trump hugged her.

It was quite a moment.

It was a heavy day, a moving day.

But most of all, it was an uplifting day.

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.”