“I forgive him.” They were three little words, and yet, they were huge.
In a stadium packed to capacity, Erika Kirk’s address to an assassin was delivered in tears and received with silence until the crowd grew into applause.
“The answer to hate is not hate,” she added. It is, perhaps, the message America needs to hear most and the one it has heard least.
As it happened: Trump delivers speech at Charlie Kirk’s memorial
President Donald Trump embraces Erika Kirk. Pic: AP
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The memorial to Charlie Kirk felt like a Republican state funeral in all but name.
This was MAGA in mourning, an occasion that laid bare the influence of Charlie Kirk and his politics.
They had travelled in their tens of thousands to the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
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This was a Republican movement in one place, with one microphone, after an assassination that accelerated the tectonic shift in US politics.
A week and a half since the assassination, political reaction has distilled into a war over freedom of speech and that was revisited by the president, even if he reserved most of his speech to pay homage to Charlie Kirk.
The White House decanted a full team from Washington DC to Arizona.
They came for reasons of sympathy and bereavement, of course. It was also an occasion laced with politics.
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Politically, it was a full-court press to style the horses amongst the youth vote and Christian nationalists.
Charlie Kirk brought them onside, and Team Trump wants to keep them there.
