Erika Kirk has endorsed JD Vance for the 2028 election—at a giddy event where she joked about the intimate onstage hug she shared with the Vice President.
Kirk, whose husband Charlie was murdered in September, walked on to the stage at AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona on Thursday evening wearing a shimmering golden suit, smiling and waving.
The event, at least on paper, had a somber backdrop as the largest meeting for Turning Point USA since its founder was shot and killed.
After the pyrotechnics and cheering from the throngs of Republicans in the crowd subsided, she found that she couldn’t access her prepared speech because her iPad had failed her.
But the widow, 37, confidently brushed off the technical hitch and began ad-libbing a speech.
Kirk, who now serves as Turning Point’s CEO, soon brought up the hug she shared with Vance during an October ceremony honoring her dead husband, which some described as charged or even steamy.
“They’re pressed up against each other, he is smiling, and the little crème de la crème on the sexual aspect of that interaction, besides the pelvis placement, is she’s running her hands through his hair,” body language expert Patti Wood said at the time.
The gag was a reference to the exceptionally touchy embrace she shared with married Vance, 40, where he clung to her hips, and she clutched the back of his head. Quipping that ex-MSNBC host Joy Reid, who had sparred with her husband on occasion, “needed a hug,” the widow cheerfully joked: “And honestly, I’m here for it if she needs it. I’ve got a good hug for you… I’ll even touch the back of your head.”
The hugging gag brought Erika onto the subject of Vance. “We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible,” she crowed.
This drew a huge cheer from the crowd. Turning Point USA, the organization founded by Charlie Kirk, is seen as highly influential in shaping the voter sentiment of young Americans. That influence has likely grown since Kirk’s execution at Utah Valley University made him a martyr for the MAGA movement.
Vance, meanwhile, was close to Kirk, who was 31 when he was killed. The vice president is set to speak at the same conference on Sunday, to close the show.
Trump’s number two, whose wife, Usha, has made a habit of forgetting to wear her wedding ring of late, has largely avoided speaking about the 2028 election, claiming that he is focused on delivering the president’s agenda, for now at least.
In late October, he told Miranda Devine on the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast that he never “wakes up” and thinks about becoming the president.
He is, however, the favorite to represent the Republicans in the next presidential election, and Trump has previously said he believes both Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be the strongest candidates for the top of the GOP ticket.
Historical odds are against Vance. Just sitting vice-presidents have won presidential elections, and only one since the early days of the U.S.
The first three were John Adams in 1796, Thomas Jefferson in 1800, Martin Van Buren in 1836. The only one to win a modern election was George H. W. Bush in 1988, who served just one term.
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