Bulwark Takes - A Widow Preaches Love. Stephen Miller Embraces Hate.

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Sam Stein and Andrew Egger take on the stark contrasts at Charlie Kirk’s funeral — Erika Kirk’s forgiveness, Donald Trump’s unseriousness, Stephen Miller’s fury, and Tucker Carlson’s odd dog whistle.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein. I'm managing out to Bullwork, joined by Andrew Egg, author of Morning Shots. We're here tonight, Sunday night, 9, 10 p.m. We're going to be talking about Charlie Kirk's Memorial Service. It was at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, which Andrew reminded me a couple seconds ago. It was home for the Arizona Cardinals.

Pact House, overflowing crowd. It caps. Say what you will about Turning Point USA, they put on a hell of an event. Very short notice, quite the event. It was incredibly well attended. All the Republican luminaries. were there. Basically, the entire cabinet was there with House and Senate leadership to Elon Musk was there. Actually, come to think of it like weird, like, succession line

issues potentially there with the Speaker, the President, and the Vice President, but that's not really worth discussing because there were a couple takeaways. One was really good, really moving, and incredibly devastating speech from Eric Kirk, Charlie Kirk's widow. And then the other was just a series of otherwise interesting, highly political, and then kind of borderline odd, if not fully odd speeches from some of the other luminaries. I want to start with a good because it was really, it was honestly a moving speech. Erica Kirk gets up there. And Andrew, I don't know how you felt. And certainly this is more your turf than mine. I am Jewish. This is not like my religion. But the way she sort of

steeled herself, the way that she invoked what seemed to me a deep religious underpinning to her remarks, the way she talked at one point about forgiving the man who shot and killed and assassinated her husband, left her widow, and a mother of two, a single mother of two. I just I don't I didn't have this I would not have the strength for that it was an it was an incredible moment of grace and um you know I think people should go and watch it yeah and I mean as she was coming up to the podium I mean like I'd been kind of watching this thinking about whether I was going to write about this event for you know the newsletter tomorrow and like she comes up to speak and like immediately like in my mind I've been like okay yeah she's going to speak she's spoken already once on on this attack but like as she's coming up to the podium it really struck I'm like, this is like a live thing. She's like up there in front of all of these people. This just happened. You know, there's a reason like it's not that common for, for, you know, the immediately

bereaved to speak at funerals. Like, it's all so raw. And like, she was plainly, like, so overcome with emotion. I was like, pardon me was just like, get her out of there, you know? Like, how can you call on a person to do this? And then, like, the longer she spoke, the more my, I mean, just me personally, my jaw was just kind of on the floor with, I mean, it was, it was a powerful, powerful speech. And, like, she talked a lot.

And it was not, it was not particularly political. We'll get to the politics. But, yeah, that struck me, that struck me, too. It wasn't political. It was spiritual. She, Erica Kirk, has been in the public eye, kind of, for a long time. And she's, like, you know, been sort of an influencer of sorts. Not quite along the same lines as Charlie Kirk, right?

I mean, he has had his project that was both theological and political, obviously primarily political. That's the thing he was mostly known for, even though he, you know, talked more and more about his faith, especially toward the last years of his life. Her project was explicitly religious all along. He's basically a Christian influencer, right? And so she's in this weird place now where she's been kind of like thrust into his role. She's the new CEO of Turning Point USA, right? So like that's a political thing. But that was not what she chose to talk about, you know, during this speech. She chose to talk about a lot of a lot, you know, just her comfort in her faith, you know,

in the wake of her husband's death. She took the opportunity to sort of exhort a lot of the young people in attendance sort of along the lines of her faith, you know, exhortation to like be, you know, to become Christian, obviously for one thing, but also just for a second. Let me just, let's just listen to it. That man, that young man, I forgive him. Thank you. I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do.

The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel. is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us. All right. So look, I mean, look, like you said, I mean, the spirituality, the exhortions towards faith, forgiveness, it feels like a lifetime ago, but after the Dillon Roof shootings at, I mean, a church down in trust in South Carolina, people might not remember this,

but it was the family members of the victims who confronted Roof in some sort of court proceeding and looked him in the eye and said, I forgive you. And we could play that too. Victim's family spoke directly to Dylan Ruff over video conference, the daughter of 70-year-old Ethel Lanz. You took something very precious for me from me. I would never talk to her ever again. I'll never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you. Alana Simmons spoke of her grandfather, Reverend Daniel Simmons.

Although my grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof, and their legacies will live alone, so hate won't win. Tawanza Sanders pleaded with the gunman to shoot him instead of his aunt. We welcome you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms. You have killed some of the most beautifulest people that I know. Talonsa Sanders is my son, but Tijuana was my hero. Toonza was my hero. But as we said in Bible study, we enjoyed you.

But may God have mercy on you. I don't know. It takes something extraordinary internally to do something like that. I couldn't imagine. And then, like, it just, the other thing, though, about it. And you could speak to this is that it came in the context of other speeches that it's hard to describe sort of the general theme of the evening. I mean, the Post, Washington Post talked about kind of the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. others sort of looked at the kind of overtly political elements of the speech.

What stood out to you about the rest of the speeches beyond Erica Kirk? Yeah, I mean, they were sort of on a spectrum, right? I mean, there were some people, plenty of people who were doing sort of the same thing that she was doing. I mean, like, Marco Rubio really stuck out to me insofar as, like, at the very end of his speech, he kind of just did like a sort of like evangelical preacher, sort of like gospel account of just sort of like, you know, we're all sinners, but there's this guy who came down from heaven. His name was Jesus. This is not his actual language. But like, you know, like basically telling the Christian gospel account in that way. And like me as a, as a, you know, former, you know, campaign reporter who has seen a lot of like this stuff deployed on the campaign trail, I'm kind of cynically like, all right, what's the political turn here? And then there wasn't one, right? Like that was actually just the end of his speech was he was just like he wanted to. to make this sort of like Christian gospel point, which, which, you know, like, again, like, yeah, I'm, I'm a Christian. I found it very powerful. There were a lot of kind of like medium, kind of like in between types, you know, a very, very frequent refrain from, you know, J.D. Vance and Pete Heggseth and a lot of these people was like, you know, don't worry, Charlie, like, we've got it from here.

Like, very much, like, kind of picking up the mantle and, like, carrying on the. the political work. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. You know, it's kind of the question's like, what's the plan, you know, what exactly what mission are you going to be carrying forward? Right. And, you know, we have, we have a lot of opinions about what J.D. Vance and Pete Hegg said that's up to a lot. But let's get to, I want to get to two others. One was Tucker. I will start with Tucker. Tucker just kind of like, people interpreted this as a dog whistle, and I think it was, but basically sort of like winking, like, it might have been the Jews, and we can listen to this. Let's hear what he says. So it's about 2,000 years ago

in Jerusalem, and Jesus shows up, and he starts talking about the people in power, and he starts doing the worst thing that you can do, which is telling the truth about people, and they hate it, and they just go bonkers. They hate it, and they become obsessed with making him stop. This guy's got to stop talking. We've got to shut this guy up. And I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamplit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus thinking about what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us. We must make him stop talking. And there's always one guy with the bright idea and I could just hear him say, I've got an idea. Why don't we just kill him? That'll shut him up. That'll fix the problem.

So yeah, I mean, it was, I don't know, kind of bordered on a little bit of a wink-wink to me. So that was weird. But the real weird one was, well, we'll get to Trump later. The real weird one was Stephen Miller. Okay? I'm just going to read some lines from Stephen Miller. The first one, I don't want to laugh at it, but it was because it's dark. But he goes, I'm reminded of a famous expression, the storm whispers to the warrior that you cannot withstand my strength.

The warrior whisper is back. I am the storm. so I didn't I never heard this had you heard this one before this that's new to me yeah yeah it's not famous it's apparently a 2015 meme an internet meme that some people have wrongly said originates with gangis con also I don't think he got it right it's not the storm whispers to the warrior it's the fate whispers to the warrior but whatever Stephen went for it he then goes on from there he says the army then he says an army

has arisen those trying to incite violence against us What do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are hatred. We are the ones who lift up humanity. You have no idea the dragon you have awakened. These are bridge quotes. But it was like, it was a little scary, honestly. Stephen Miller, look, there has been an enormous outpouring of energy, just energy on the right, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination. Some of it, some small subset of it, has been like positive. energy in some respect. I mean, like, like, again, we were just talking about Erica Kirk. Like, there's like a transcendence to that. Stephen Miller has more so than like anybody else in all of America, like, come right out of the gate after this assassination with a plan. He's like, I'm going to take this energy and I'm going to channel it into this political project that I have that's all about destroying the left. And I think that's what we saw today. Right. I mean, like,

it's his life's work and he's, you know, going for it basically. Yeah, absolutely. And look, we've, we've written about this stuff. We talked about some of this stuff. He has said some really alarming and unnerving stuff just in the last couple of days about what they're planning and everything. But like something about him doing it in this moment at this funeral service, him couching it in this explicitly religious language. I mean, at one point he says, you know, when Charlie Kirk was shot, the angels wept, but those tears have become a fire inside of us. And, you know, like explicitly saying that like we are on the side of the angels. And then you just mentioned it a minute ago, you know, our foes are these, are these nothings. They're these, there are these vacancies,

these emptiness, this sort of grasping, I mean, again, like, not to continue to talk in religious terms, but like, this is how, you know, Christians talk about the concept of evil and the concept of sin is that it's not like a substance. It's like an absence. It's a lack. It's a falling short. I'll just say, like, beyond the darkness of the, of the speech itself, like, he needs like a, he needs an editor. like he needs an edward some of this stuff is just over the top and mixed metaphors everywhere oh yeah 100% in the tears and the come on yeah yeah as as we're on our way to the camps we'll be like stephen you know that was it's a mixed metaphor no but like i'm kidding i'm kidding and i shouldn't be because like again like it's it's all very serious like the good stuff and the

bad stuff is all really serious here you can't help but kid you got it's how you get through i know i know but like this guy's really powerful You know, like, this is the policy guy for Donald Trump. And we'll talk about Donald Trump in a minute. But, like, even Donald Trump, he hits some of these same themes, but it's in, like, a very kind of goofy and, like, the way that he does things, you know? And, like, he's the guy who's, like, going to, like, shake his fist and rant and rave and then get distracted by, like, you know, hanging new curtains in the Oval Office.

But, like, Stephen Miller is, like, determined to use this moment to inaugurate a never before, like a crackdown on his political opponents, the likes of which we've never seen. And like, we should talk about, like, these things are totally intention, right? I mean, like, there's like two ways forward from this moment, like, for the political right. And they, you could basically say Stephen Miller is like the mascot for one side here. And Erica Kirk is carrying the banner for the other side. Like, like, how do you respond to this provocation? Do you respond in a spirit of sort of like forgiveness where you are literally like praying for the soul of the

person who did this. I mean, like, we, we kind of glossed over that. That's insane. Like, I could not believe that she did that. And, like, yes, it's happened before. Like, yes, it's, like, I couldn't believe it when they did it in the wake of the, in the wake of the Charleston shooting either. Like, that is an unbelievable transcendent. I couldn't do it. But I, but I guess I'm not, it's not pushback. But I think, like, it doesn't seem to me that there's much tension here, to be honest. Like, yes, Erica Kirk is saying this and we'll see what happens. But, like, pretty much every other speaker either skirted the idea or was, you know, and I'm not every other speaker. Actually, the people who, like, really, really, like, have the power were very clear that they want to go for it.

And that brings us to Trump. And I just think it's worth, let's go back to Charleston for a second. Because, again, history is a good guide here. Obama went down to Charleston after the shooting and he spoke at the church. not at the church. He spoke at the moray for the church, I should say. And he used the idea of those family members saying they forgave Dylan Roof as sort of an illustration of grace that everyone should strive for. And he sort of used a speech built around what it means to be driven by grace in a moment of incredible grief and challenge. And then, of course, he sang quite famously amazing grace.

Donald Trump did not do that. I mean, and it's not in Donald Trump. No one would expect Donald Trump to do that, of course, because Donald Trump's not like that. It's a different person. And people can say, well, you know, Obama was, you know, hyperpartisan and, you know, he divided the country, whatever. But in these moments, Obama did not do that. He did do the beer summit. He said something about Trevon Martin once that got people very mad.

But in these moments, this is not what Obama. Obama was very conciliatory and tried to bring people together. Donald Trump in his speech said this. He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent. And I don't want the best for them.

I'm sorry. I am sorry, Erica. But now Erica can talk to me and the whole group. And maybe they can convince me that that's not right, but I can't stand my opponent. So look, I mean, like you said, he says it with like the kind of tongue and cheek. like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I'm going for an applause line. But he says it enough that at this point, no one should consider this a joke. It's how he feels. Like, this is what he is. He wants to go for it. There's a body of evidence to suggest he has no desire to bring the country together in

this moment. It's not, he's not even pretending to try. And especially when when you just like look at the way that Donald Trump always delivers speeches, I mean, this is his constant cadence. He's like, yeah, he'll read whatever you have on the prompter. And then he'll do it in this unbelievable monotone. It's like the most phoned end thing you've ever seen. and then he'll break off of that to tell you how he really feels about this side or the other things. That was this here, right? I mean, it's like that's, that's the one thing he said in the entire clip that is like him. I'm done with a telepenter. I'm going to actually have my ID come out now. Yes, 100%. So that's, that's Trump. And I think, you know, so while I do, while I was incredibly

moving to see Erica Kirk say what she said, and honestly, it's been really difficult to watch this entire thing play out over the past 10 days. You feel horrible for the family. And you, you can tell even in these moments where you see these reactions that you might not even, you know, might find a little bit off putting from the right. You can tell it's from a place where they're like deeply hurt, right? But then you have someone like Trump and Stephen Miller who are like, we're just going to go for it. And we don't care about bringing the country together. We care about defeating lefties. And that's a scary thought. And it's scary to see it come out in an event that is otherwise meant to memorialize someone.

and to, in theory, pursue the type of unity and forgiveness that his own wife says he embodied. These are the people who are wielding the power and they have a plan to do that, right? And I don't think anybody should expect, you know, we're all going to wake up tomorrow morning and they'll have called off the dogs of this project. I mean, all the other news that's come out this weekend of them just explicitly going after political opponents in a bunch of different ways, right? Um, I, all that being said, I don't do a video later on the, uh, D or J weekend. That was just, yeah, well, yeah, I'll be finishing. Finish, finish. Finish.

In theory, Bill's writing about that for tomorrow. So I can read about it in theory and warning shots, right. Um, but let me, yeah, let me, let me just say one thing, which is that like, yes, these are the guys who wield the power. But I do not, I do not think it would be quite correct to just, like, wave off the Erica Kirk thing, right? I mean, like, this is, it cuts against so much of what we have been hearing out of the, out of the political.

Right. I mean, it even kind of cuts against her own, like, cuts against is not quite the right word, but like, you know, she spoke a few days ago, like, like two days after the killing or something like that. And, and, you know, sounded a much more strident kind of political note, right? I mean, in terms of like echoing the rhetoric of sort of Stephen Miller and these guys about kind of like the corporate responsibility of, I don't want to put words in her mouth. I might be overstating that a little in my recollection. But like, the. there was enough of that there that the contrast was really striking to me. And I just think, like, look, she's a person who has inherited this unbelievably large public mantle from Charlie Kirk, who was like a giant figure on the, on the contemporary right, especially online, especially among young people. And, like, she's, she's going to carry on his political work in some respects. And it just seemed like it would not have been like a surprise for her to get up and, like, speak in that exact same vein. Like, who in all of America could you fault for doing that less than her in this moment, right? Like, some guy just shot her husband, like left her kids fatherless, left her a widow, less than two weeks ago. That just happened.

And, like, she talked about, like, being at the morgue and having to, like, you know, identify his corpse and, like, just unbelievable stuff. And then for her to, like, go from that to, like, having to, like, physically steal herself to say, and I forgive him because that's what my faith calls for me to do is what Charlie would have wanted me to do and like we should all pray for him and you can't respond to hate with hate you have to respond with love that's the gospel

I mean that is not like that's not something to just sort of like be like okay Erica you don't wield the real power you know what I mean like she's I wasn't saying that but no no I'm not I'm not responding I'm not like scolding you I'm just I'm like talking about my own kind of like I just couldn't

believe that and I like you said you said it right at the beginning. It was a real moment of grace, and I'm very grateful to her that she could somehow do that. All right, buddy, appreciate you watching this, appreciate you doing this. To those who are watching us, appreciate that too. We do appreciate the viewership and the subscription. So, hey, subscribe to the feed. We'll talk to you later, okay? Later, bud.