CLAIM: Various viral posts claimed Erika Kirk was eight weeks pregnant, 11 weeks on from her husband’s death. This linked in with unsubstantiated allegations romantically linking her and JD Vance.
BACKGROUND: Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA, was killed on a college campus in September. His wife, Erika Kirk, assumed his role as the organization’s leader and has subsequently faced heightened public scrutiny, including social media speculation that she is in a relationship with Vice President JD Vance.
METHOD: We tracked the origin of the rumours back to a series of AI-generated posts on Facebook that initially claimed she was pregnant when Charlie Kirk was killed. Later, the speculation around JD Vance fuelled a distorted version of this rumour. Erika Kirk addressed some of the speculation in a recent media appearance.
RATING: Images that showed Erika Kirk holding an ultrasound image were AI-generated. There was no further evidence from credible sources to support the claims.

Eleven weeks after the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on a U.S. college campus, claims began circulating on social media that his wife, Erika Kirk, was pregnant.

The claims evolved when social media users circulated allegations that Mrs. Kirk was eight weeks pregnant — a timeline that fuelled speculation that the father was not her late husband.

These allegations overlapped with prior social media speculation about the nature of Erika Kirk’s relationship with Vice President JD Vance, following an onstage embrace between the pair at a Turning Point USA event in late October.

While the most recent allegations about Erika Kirk were amplified on X in the form of jokes and political commentary, the claims originated in poorly produced AI-generated content posted on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

A trend of AI-generated imagery and related captions featuring the Kirks circulated on social platforms like Facebook in late October and early November. Many of them directly showed Erika Kirk holding an ultrasound image, while others featured pictures of the couple with captions suggesting she was pregnant.

The captions, which used highly emotional language, talked about her ‘bittersweet pregnancy’ and ‘a mother’s quiet strength,’ and quoted Kirk as saying the child “will grow up without knowing the man who dreamed of holding them”.

As of late November, the majority of the Facebook posts had been removed from the platform. However, evidence of them was still visible on Google Lens searches carried out on a picture of Kirk holding a scan. A version was also found on Instagram, where it was still live (archived here) as of November 28.

Many of the images appeared in collages also featuring real pictures of the Kirk couple. However, images of her crying and holding an ultrasound print were clearly AI-generated. While many AI models can now create realistic, photograph-like images, some of the pictures shared in this story showed Kirk with an exaggerated crying expression, reminiscent of older iterations.

Posts like this circulated on fake news pages on Facebook for weeks, but the rumour did not break into mainstream conversation until late November, when claims began circulating that Kirk was eight weeks pregnant, despite her husband being dead for 11 weeks.

Posts and memes about Erika Kirk being in the early stages of pregnancy racked up tens of millions of views on X. Individual examples included a post from November 25 with 16.6 million views, a post from November 23 with 7.7 million views, and another on the same day with 1.9 million views.

The pregnancy allegations gained traction alongside separate, unsubstantiated social media allegations that Vice President JD Vance and Erika Kirk were engaged in a relationship following Charlie Kirk’s death.

The allegations also spread on TikTok; one video from a parody ‘news’ page racked up over 4 million views and 300,000 likes. Although tagged as ‘satire,’ the information was delivered in a news style, and the comments suggested that that many viewers believed it.

No verified news organizations or credible sources close to Erika Kirk have indicated that she was pregnant. The relationship allegations emerged after an embrace between her and JD Vance onstage at a Turning Point USA event in late October, which coincided with the initial timing of the pregnancy claims.

Divorce rumours circulating around JD Vance and his wife, Usha, further fuelled the discourse after a sighting of Usha Vance without her wedding ring during a recent outing. Explaining the absence of the ring, a spokesperson for the second lady told news outlets that she is “a mother of three young children, who does a lot of dishes, gives lots of baths, and forgets her ring sometimes”.

There was no reliable evidence that Erika Kirk was indeed pregnant. However, she mentioned pregnancy herself earlier this week in an interview with conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly.

Kirk, who has two children with Charlie Kirk, told Kelly that she had been praying that she was pregnant the day her husband was killed.

“We wanted to have four. And I was praying to God that I was pregnant when he got murdered. I was like ‘oh, goodness, that would be the ultimate blessing out of this catastrophe’.”

Mrs. Kirk, in tears at this point of the interview, expressed thanks that she has her two children and did not say that another was on the way. “I was praying, both of us were, we were really excited to just expand our family,” she said.

In the same interview, she addressed the hug with JD Vance that sparked so many rumours, saying: “For those of you who know me … I hug. Whoever is hating on a hug needs a hug themselves. I will give you a free hug anytime you want a hug. My love language is touch, if you will.

“I will give you a play-by-play. They just played the emotional video, I’m walking over, he’s walking over. I’m starting to cry, he says ‘he’s so proud of you’, and I say ‘God bless you’ and I touch the back of his head. Anyone who I’ve hugged, that I have touched the back of your head when I hug you, I always say ‘God bless you’. That’s just me.”

The Kirk couple were longtime friends of JD Vance; Charlie and JD Vance’s friendship dated back to 2017, according to a post by the U.S. Vice President, and Charlie was an early advocate for Vance joining Donald Trump as running mate.

Since Charlie Kirk’s death, Erika Kirk has taken over his role as leader of Turning Point USA, a right-wing organization with huge influence in the MAGA movement. She has indicated her intention to back JD Vance for president in 2028, which she said was something her “husband was very direct about”.

SOURCES