The State of the Union: Erika Kirk’s Moment

They say that State of the Union addresses are forgettable partisan affairs, the details of which few will recall in a week’s time. From the president’s emcee-style introduction of the Gold Medal U.S. Men’s Hockey Team to the high national honors he bestowed on America’s heroes to the extended staring contest between Trump and his Democratic counterparts, this State of the Union speech may test that theory.

If State of the Union addresses are easily forgotten, it’s because there’s rarely any reason to revisit them. But several moments in Trump’s speech seem destined to be extensively reviewed and dissected by influential parties. Perhaps foremost among them was a touching moment between the president and the late conservative organizer Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk.

“Last year, Charlie was violently murdered by an assassin and martyred, really, martyred for his beliefs,” the president said before introducing Erika Kirk. The chamber erupted in chants as she stood: “Charlie, Charlie!” His widow smiled briefly before tears overwhelmed her. “In Charlie’s memory, we must all come together to reaffirm that America is one nation under God, and we must totally reject political violence of any kind.”

It was a quick digression. But in it, Trump administered a dose of the antidote to the madness overtaking America’s online influencers. It represented a direct rebuke of the conspiracists who made Erika Kirk into the object of their paranoia.

The president was clear about who killed Kirk: Not an elite hit squad in league with various foreign intelligence services and supported by an ever-expanding cabal of traitors and turncoats, but an “assassin” motivated by his hatred for Kirk’s advocacy. The dramaturgists who arranged this spectacle knew exactly what they were doing when they seated Erika Kirk next to Anna Zarutska, mother of the late Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was stabbed to death on a Charlotte, N.C., commuter bus last year. Implicit in that seating arrangement is that these women are the victims of similar crimes — crimes that are a product, at least in part, of a permissive environment in which the mentally ill and habitual recidivists are allowed to deteriorate until they do irreparable harm to themselves and others.

This moment is likely to be remembered because it will be thoroughly reviewed by those who were implicitly rebuked by it. They will commit themselves to a campaign of retroactive conditioning aimed at convincing their audiences that Trump wasn’t really chastising them. Rather, he was conveying some elaborate coded message that surely supports their convoluted theories of the case. And if that doesn’t stick, they’ll use the moment as evidence of Trump’s implication in their sprawling plot.

For those who retain their capacity for rational thought, this is how conspiracy theories fall apart. At a certain point, an intrigue that involves too many moving parts and influential figures — up to and including the most watched and studied man on the planet — strains credulity. There are too many variables, too many people involved, and too many assumptions of absolute competence for the theory to be plausible. And the alternative theories of Charlie Kirk’s murder are myths in desperate need of busting.

Fueled by the Kirk conspiracy, all the old QAnon madness that consumed right-wing influencers in the last decade is making a comeback. The Republican Party was not well served by the paranoid bent to which too many on the right once succumbed. Seeing the most influential Republican in America ratify the version of events that actually happened, all while joining hands with America’s elected representatives to applaud Erika Kirk’s strength and denounce political violence, might help shake the persuadable from that delusion.

Even if that moment fails to break the online world’s fascination with sexy but wildly implausible alternative theories of the world, it was the right thing to do. There’s immense value in that.