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As you’ve likely heard by now, Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ dinner erupted in violence when a gunman charged a security checkpoint and exchanged fire with Secret Service agents.
President Donald Trump and other administration officials were evacuated from the scene, and there were no serious injuries.
In addition to the targeted politicians, numerous media figures were forced to flee the scene, including Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk.
Eirka has been more visible than ever in the months since her husband’s murder, and many have accused her of exploiting the situation.
Kirk received more criticism over the weekend after footage of her being ushered away from the Correspondents’ Dinner went viral.
“The most performative woman who ever lived,” one user wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
The replies to the original post ran the full gamut, with some echoing the user’s criticism and others accusing them of being needlessly cruel to a widow who had been freshly re-traumatized.
“I can’t handle her. She lives for attention and it’s so gross she will always find it,” one commenter wrote.
“People will never see her for the lying snake who traffics and worked with Epstein and took out her own husband. Where TF are her kids??”
“Maybe she’ll finally stay the f–k home and raise her kids,” another added.
“‘I just wanna go hoooome.’ Cool. Go home and stay there,” a third chimed in.
But some of the commenters — even the ones who don’t agree with Erika politically — were quick to point out that this is a situation that calls for compassion, not derision.
“Implying that this was performative is real f’n gross. She is a HUMAN BEING WHO LOST HER HUSBAND due to being shot. If she had walked out calmly with no emotion you’d criticize her for that, too,” one person replied.
“Her husband was shot in the neck 6 months ago and there were shots fired at an event she was attending you f–king demon,” another added.
There’s certainly something to be said for the idea that Erika should be prioritizing her children over her career in the wake of her husband’s murder.
But that doesn’t mean we should throw stones at a woman whose life was recently changed by gun violence as she flees a scene where shots were fired.
There was a time when an act of politically motivated violence was the sort of thing that united Americans from different ends of the ideological spectrum, as everyone would come together to declare that violence is never the answer.
Hopefully, we can eventually get back to that mindset.
