{"id":344542,"date":"2025-12-12T14:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T14:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/344542\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T14:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T14:35:07","slug":"erika-kirk-shares-a-call-to-action-for-parents-to-stop-political-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/344542\/","title":{"rendered":"Erika Kirk shares a “call to action” for parents to stop political violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk said it’s easy to “blame everyone else” for the recent\u00a0rise in political violence<\/a>, but she believes parents play a key role in preventing it.<\/p>\n

“We have to look in the mirror,” she said during a town hall with CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, held months after her husband Charlie Kirk’s assassination during a Turning Point USA event in Utah. The conversation will air Saturday at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Erika Kirk urged parents to consider how they’re raising their children, discouraging them from taking a hands-off approach and handing kids devices to hold their attention: “When you become a father, when you become a mother, how are you raising your kids? Are you taking responsibility, or are you giving them a device and saying, ‘Go down that rabbit hole. I’m trying to go to Pilates class.'”<\/p>\n

“So, my call to action from that is: Parents, step up,” she said. “Do you want your kid to be a thought leader or an assassin? That’s where we’re at.”<\/p>\n

In 2025, figures\u00a0across the political spectrum<\/a>\u00a0have been targeted, resulting in deaths, injuries, and numerous threats. About 85% of U.S. adults said this year that politically motivated violence is increasing, according to a recent\u00a0Pew Research Center survey<\/a>. A\u00a0CBS News poll<\/a>\u00a0released in October found 86% of Americans believe political violence is unacceptable \u2014 while 34% of college students believe that it is acceptable to use violence to stop someone from speaking on campus, according to\u00a0a recent poll<\/a>\u00a0from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.<\/p>\n

Like the majority of Americans, Erika Kirk stated that she “will never support political violence.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Weiss asked Erika Kirk whether political leaders have a responsibility to turn down the temperature in order to break the cycle of political violence.<\/p>\n

“Well, I think everyone has a responsibility to do that, and I’m doing my part,” Erika Kirk said. “I’m not in control of other people.”<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n

\n Go deeper with The Free Press\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk said it’s easy to “blame everyone else” for the recent\u00a0rise in political violence,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,49204,94227,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-344542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-charlie-kirk","tag-erika-kirk","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}