Erika Kirk, widow of murdered activist Charlie Kirk, endorses Vice President JD Vance for the 2028 US presidential race at a major conservative gathering.
PHOENIX: The widow of murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk has endorsed JD Vance for president in 2028.
Erika Kirk announced her support for the vice president at the AmericaFest gathering of Turning Point USA, the influential youth organisation founded by her husband.
“We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible,” she told thousands of attendees on Thursday.
This endorsement fires an early starting gun on the next White House race with the backing of a major youth mobilisation group.
Vance is scheduled to speak at the event on Sunday but has not yet formally committed to a 2028 run.
The move comes as the Make America Great Again movement begins to consider a future without Donald Trump.
An early endorsement from this increasingly powerful group could create momentum for a Vance candidacy.
It also occurs amid growing fractures and visible disillusionment with Trump within the MAGA movement.
Firebrand Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene recently launched a blistering attack on Trump’s second-term agenda.
Greene, who will leave Congress in January, is speculated by some commentators as a potential 2028 candidate.
Other right-wing figures, including white nationalist Nick Fuentes, also appear to be positioning themselves.
Vance was close to Charlie Kirk before the activist was shot dead on a Utah college campus.
The vice president flew to Utah to console Erika Kirk and accompanied her husband’s body back to Arizona.
Footage showed Vance walking with the coffin as it was loaded onto Air Force Two.
Charlie Kirk was a talented speaker who built a large social media following by debating on college campuses.
He parlayed that influence into a movement that mobilised young voters for right-wing causes.
A month after his death, Trump posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. – AFP
