Back in December, my daughter and I attended AmericaFest, the four-day patriotic gathering organized by Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk. It was a high-energy event—policy, patriotism, cultural commentary, and the unmistakable electricity of people who believe ideas matter.
But the most powerful moment I witnessed had nothing to do with applause lines or partisan victories. It had to do with grace.
During one of the sessions, Erika Kirk took the stage and invited Nicki Minaj to join her. The conversation was lively and candid. At one point, Nicki praised Vice President JD Vance’s rhetorical skill, saying he “assassinated” his opposition in debate—clearly meaning he dismantled them intellectually.
The word left her mouth.
And time stopped.
Nicki froze. Her eyes drifted upward in visible horror as the realization struck. Charlie Kirk had been assassinated only two months prior. The metaphor she had casually used now echoed with tragic literalness. The room felt suspended between shock and sympathy.
It was one of those moments we all dread—the split second when a harmless phrase becomes painfully loaded because of context we momentarily forgot. A verbal misstep. An unintended wound. A human error.
And then Erika moved.
Without hesitation, without embarrassment, without a trace of reproach, she reassured Nicki. It’s okay. You’re fine.
No harm done.
It was dignified. It was generous. It was class.
There was no public correction. No dramatic pause for emotional emphasis. No leveraging of the moment to draw attention back to her own grief. Just a quiet extension of mercy.
That interaction has stayed with me more than any speech from that weekend.
We live in a culture that capitalizes on slips of the tongue. Social media thrives on them. Headlines amplify them. Entire reputations can teeter because of one poorly chosen word. And we’ve all seen how quickly mockery can follow—Nicki herself was recently ridiculed at the Grammy Awards, a reminder that public life today often comes with little patience and even less kindness.
But what if we chose differently?
What if, instead of tightening the spotlight on someone’s mistake, we offered them a lifeline?
Because that is what grace does. It throws a rope before the fall becomes a plunge.
Grace does not pretend words don’t matter. They do. But grace discerns intent. It recognizes humanity in the moment of failure. It understands that most people are not malicious—they are imperfect. Distracted. Emotional. Human.
Erika Kirk modeled something rare in that instant: emotional intelligence under pressure. She understood exactly what had happened. She read the room. She saw Nicki’s mortification. And instead of letting that moment harden into discomfort, she softened it.
There is a strength in that kind of response. A steadiness.
Extending compassion when someone misspeaks requires confidence. It requires security in one’s own identity. It requires the humility to remember that we, too, have misspoken. That we, too, have wished someone would give us the benefit of the doubt.
In an age of viral outrage, grace is countercultural.
It is easy to correct. Easy to criticize. Easy to score points. It is harder to absorb the sting, assess the heart behind the words, and say, “You’re okay.”
We will all, at some point, choose the wrong phrase. We will all accidentally step on a landmine of context. The question is not whether mistakes will happen. They will.
The question is what we do when they do.
Do we escalate—or do we extend?
That night at AmericaFest, amid speeches about national strength and cultural battles, I witnessed a quieter kind of strength: the strength to show mercy in public. The strength to preserve someone’s dignity. The strength to lead with compassion.
And in my view, that kind of class may be one of the most powerful forms of leadership we have left.
