When Charlie Kirk was alive, his wife Erika had a retrograde role that was easy to understand. She didn’t use the word, but she was a tradwife. Her position at Turning Point USA, the organization her husband co-founded in 2012 to promote conservative politics on high school, college and university campuses across the country, was essentially to dote on him as her leader. After they married in 2021, she became the evidence that Charlie Kirk was living up to his own beliefs about male leadership — and female submission — at home during the crucial period that he was rebranding himself as an evangelical leader from the secular libertarian he had been.
He died a year ago this week, shot to death while speaking at Utah Valley University. While Erika Kirk is still out there preaching marriage and submission, her message doesn’t cohere like it did when her husband was alive. She obviously doesn’t live the tradwife life anymore. As many people have noticed, she seems like she’s doing just fine without a husband to lead her.
