The brief acknowledgment of Kirk’s painful situation was a moment of uncomfortable grief in a weekend full of them. Throughout AmericaFest, which ran from Thursday to Sunday, Turning Point USA tried to memorialize its founder as a newly minted Christian martyr. Inside the Phoenix Convention Center, the organization set up a tent identical to the one under which Charlie was shot at Utah Valley University; the display stayed up all weekend, functioning as a spot where fans could pay homage—and take selfies.
During the event, Kirk also sat in front of a TPUSA tour bus to imitate the “Prove Me Wrong” debates for which her husband often went viral—though MS Now’s Brandy Zadrozny noted that no one came to challenge her. Instead, admirers asked kind questions. “Erika’s answers, which sometimes rambled,” Zadrozny wrote, “included stories about her husband and insights into biohacking, divine timing, vitamin C, the dangers of Botox, her two small children, and her grief, which felt heavy in the room.”
None of these issues came up when Kirk spoke to Minaj. Instead, the focus was on the rapper and her opinions about culture. At one point, Minaj began to speak about representation and making all people feel beautiful—common concepts in the more diversity-friendly 2010s, when Minaj first got famous. Then she shifted gears, blaming the media for “making young Black children feel proud of themselves,” but “at the same time telling other children not to be proud of themselves.” She added, “No, that’s not how it works. I don’t need someone with blond hair and blue eyes to downplay their beauty, because I know my beauty.”
It was an awkward moment, but at least one person in the audience was paying attention. On Monday morning, Vance—who made headlines of his own with an AmericaFest speech in which he crowed that “in the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore”—went on social media to praise Minaj’s similar message.
“Nicki Minaj said something at Amfest that was really profound,” he wrote. “I’m paraphrasing, but she said, ‘just because I want little black girls to think they’re beautiful doesn’t mean I need to put down little girls with blonde hair and blue eyes.’ We all got wrapped up over the last few years in zero sum thinking. This was because the people who think they rule the world pit us against one another.”
