There’s always been a line—even in our most divisive political moments—that decent people simply do not cross. You don’t mock the grieving. You don’t hurl insults at the widow of a man assassinated in cold blood. And you certainly don’t accuse a mother, just 52 days after burying her husband, of being a “fake griever” and a “grifter.” But that line apparently does not apply to Kyle Kulinski.
While millions of Americans were out trick-or-treating with their kids or attending church harvest festivals, Kulinski—a prominent left-wing commentator and co-host of a podcast—was online launching cheap and vile attacks on Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, who was murdered less than two months ago.
It wasn’t just a bad take. It was calculated cruelty. Kulinski shared a meme calling Erika a “fake grieving widow grifter,” implying her grief is not only performative but profitable. Think about that: a man was assassinated because of his political views—gunned down instead of being debated—and now his widow is being dragged through the mud for surviving it. This isn’t politics. This is sadism disguised as commentary.
But here’s the deeper issue: Kulinski didn’t even originate the meme. He lifted it. One leftist stealing from another—a morbid, mocking caricature designed to dehumanize a woman who has done nothing but mourn her husband publicly and continue the work they began together. There’s no honor among trolls, apparently.
This isn’t just heartless. It’s a ritual of ideological self-purification. The hard Left knows they should feel sympathy for Erika Kirk. They know instinctively that mocking a widow is wrong. So they perform an act of moral inversion: they convince themselves she is the problem—that she’s too composed, too visible, too articulate to be really grieving. And if she’s not really grieving, then the abuse is fair game.
There was a time when you could disagree with someone politically without fantasizing about their death or mocking the pain of those they left behind. That time, sadly, is slipping away. If you have to call a grieving mother a “grifter” to sleep at night, it’s not her conscience you should be worried about. It’s your own.
