Erika Kirk Vanity Fair spread slammed by Candace Owens amid Charlie Kirk death row; podcaster responds to 'gay' allegations

Candace Owens has criticized Erika Kirk’s Vanity Fair profile and accused her of giving the magazine extensive access declining to support an independent review of her husband, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk's assassination.

Candace Owens criticized Erika Kirk’s Vanity Fair profile and questioned her decision to cooperate with the magazine but refusing involvement in a Utah Valley University review. (@candaceoshow, Getty Images via AFP)Owens, in posts on X, questioned why Erika allowed Vanity Fair to interview her children, in-laws, employees and her mother over four months but did not direct Turning Point USA to participate in the Utah Valley University (UVU) independent review into Charlie Kirk’s killing.

Vanity Fair published a detailed profile titled “The Widow’s Peak,” focusing on Erika Kirk’s transition from a private figure to the CEO of Turning Point USA following her husband’s death.

Erika Kirk became the public face of Turning Point USA after Charlie Kirk was fatally shot during an event at Utah Valley University in September 2025. She later assumed leadership of the organization, with supporters saying she was continuing her husband’s political legacy.

The UVU independent review examined security failures surrounding the event. The report found concerns about planning, security assessments and communication failures before and after the shooting. Kirk’s family has criticized the university and indicated plans for legal action.

“Erika Kirk declined to direct her organization to partake in the UVU independent review of her husband’s assassination, yet she opened the doors for Vanity Fair,” Owens wrote.

In Owen's' words, “Vanity Fair politely savages Erika Kirk in a profile piece.”

The Vanity Fair article stated, “That is the question I set out to answer. Over four months earlier this year, I was given unprecedented access to Kirk, her mother, and Charlie’s mother, who has never before spoken to the media. I spent time with Erika’s team at Turning Point’s headquarters in Phoenix, with her children, friends, and pastor in Scottsdale, and everyone from Turning Point’s top donors to its youngest members during multiple trips to Washington, DC.”

Further below the article noted Erika's interview where she talked about her dead husband. “Across hours of interviews, Kirk spoke with remarkable candor about the most intimate details of her husband’s death,” the Vanity Fair article read.

The Vanity Fair profile also explored Erika’s grief, faith and role as a mother while leading one of America’s most influential conservative youth organizations. The article said she faced pressure from supporters, critics and conspiracy theories surrounding her husband’s death.

Charlie Kirk’s mother Kathryn Kirk has also pushed back against rumors of family conflict with Erika. She said the family grew closer after the tragedy and denied claims of a dispute over Charlie’s legacy. “We were 100% behind her,” Kathryn told Vanity Fair.

Owens also addressed online criticism surrounding her own commentary about Charlie Kirk’s death and her relationship with the conservative movement.

In another X post, she mocked what she described as changing narratives about her, writing "The narrative “Candace was secretly in love with Charlie— he distanced himself because she went too radical against Israel” has received a federally-mandate update. Now it’s ‘Candace moonlights as a lesbo and she’s secretly a Zionist’.”

Owens previously worked with Turning Point USA and had been close to Charlie Kirk before his death. After the assassination, she began questioning aspects of the official account.

According to Vanity Fair, TPUSA is completely focused on Owens comments and podcasts and her links in the organization. “Owens tweeted details about our photo shoot in July, causing the Turning Point team to spiral and go searching for the mole to no avail. In their eyes, this isn’t just a media war; it’s life or death,” the article read.

One of the TPUSA employee also confirmed to the publication that the organization is “wholly focused on Candace Owens."

In her X post, Owens basked in the confirmation and wrote, “They admit that my sources are on point. And I am apparently the sole focus of TPUSA 2.0.”

Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More