Erika Kirk skipped a planned appearance on Tuesday at a Turning Point USA event in Georgia alongside Vice President JD Vance after receiving “very serious threats,” according to event organizers.
“It’s a terrible reflection on the state of reality and the state of the country,” Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet said onstage at the Akins Ford Arena in Athens, sitting beside Vance.
Kirk’s husband, the influential conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was fatally shot in September during an appearance at a campus event in Utah.
Vance said the threats ahead of Tuesday’s event left Erika Kirk, Turning Point’s CEO, “worried.” He also lashed out at those he said had been unfairly criticizing her in the wake of her husband’s death. Erika Kirk has become the subject of conspiracy theories in some corners of the right.
“Everybody is attacking her over everything, and they’re lying about her, and it’s one of the most disgraceful things that I’ve ever seen in public life,” Vance said.
Vice President Vance is close with the Kirk family.
During a December speech, Kirk said the organization was going to back Vance’s long-rumored 2028 presidential campaign and get the Republican elected “in the most resounding way possible.”
In September, shortly after Kirk was killed, Vance hosted a memorial episode of Kirk’s podcast from the White House. Vance, joined by the second lady and Erika Kirk, flew on Air Force Two as it carried Kirk’s remains to the activist’s home state of Arizona.
Erika Kirk and Vance provoked speculation when they shared an affectionate hug during an October appearance together at a Turning Point USA event in Mississippi, where Kirk said she saw “similarities” between the vice president and her late husband.
Vance addressed the general scrutiny into Erika Kirk during Tuesday’s event, though he did not specifically mention the gossip about his interactions with her.
“This desire to go after her for the way she’s grieving her husband, that’s the most preposterous thing I’ve seen in a long time,” he said.
“Why don’t you stay in your own lane and mind your business,” he added. “Grief is complicated.”
Second Lady Usha Vance has dismissed insinuations of a relationship between the two as an ungrounded “fever dream” created by the media and has said the Vances consider such talk a family joke.
“I’d rather just sort of live in my marriage and in the real world and less in kind of the fever dreams that surround it,” she told USA Today in December. “So I mean, it is kind of a family joke, but also not something that I spend very much time thinking about.”
Erika Kirk has also downplayed the speculation, describing the hug as a benign expression of her “love language.”
“Whoever is hating on a hug needs a hug themselves,” Kirk told podcaster Megyn Kelly. “My love language is touch, if you will,” she told Kelly and explained that placing a hand on the back of someone’s head is usually how she hugs people.
Vance’s appearance in Georgia comes after a string of controversies and setbacks on the world stage, including abortive negotiations in Pakistan to end the Iran war, the ongoing White House feud with the Pope, and Vance’s unsuccessful bid to boost GOP ally Viktor Orban’s reelection campaign in Hungary.
Utah resident Tyler Robinson has been charged with Charlie Kirk’s murder. He has pleaded not guilty.
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