Have any organizations or advertisers cut ties with Charlie Kirk over his remarks about Black women?
Executive summary
There is intense reporting documenting Charlie Kirk’s 2023 comments about specific prominent Black women and the wide controversy that followed, but the sources provided do not document major advertisers or corporations publicly severing commercial ties with Kirk specifically over those remarks; instead the record in these reports centers on public condemnation, debate over misquotation, personnel controversies, and post-assassination repercussions in media and institutions [1] [2] [3] [4]. Any definitive claim that advertisers cut ties is not supported by the supplied reporting, and the available sources point to other forms of reputational fallout rather than clear advertiser departures [5] [6].
1. What Kirk actually said, and how reporters verified it
Fact-checking outlets archived and sourced an episode of The Charlie Kirk Show in which Kirk named four Black women and said they “did not have ‘the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously,’” a line that fact-checkers treated as aimed at specific public figures rather than an undifferentiated insult of all Black women (Snopes; p1_s8), while other outlets and commentators noted how the quote was framed or misquoted in online outrage (NDTV; AEI; [2]; p1_s6).
2. Public backlash, political condemnations, and competing narratives
The comments fed a broader stream of denunciations from politicians and columnists who said Kirk demeaned Black women and questioned the qualifications of Black professionals, with Representative Troy Carter explicitly criticizing Kirk’s platform for those remarks in a formal statement [7], and local leaders and community figures publicly expressing outrage in their own forums (WRAL; p1_s2).
3. Media and personnel consequences after the assassination — not the same as advertiser boycotts
Much of the tangible fallout recounted in the reporting involved media and institutional disciplinary actions tied to reactions to Kirk’s assassination and subsequent social-media commentary, including firings and suspensions of commentators or employees who posted about the killing, and corporate responses to those posts — examples reported include a game developer dismissed after a related social post and ABC suspending a program after on-air remarks — but these actions were reprisals against individuals for their responses to the assassination, not documented advertiser withdrawals from Kirk’s platforms over his 2023 comments about Black women [4].
4. Journalistic disputes and claims of misquotation complicate calls for commercial punishment
Several outlets documented disputes over how broadly Kirk’s remarks were being characterized online, with some pieces emphasizing misquotations that inflated the scope of his insult and others underscoring the clear harm of his words toward named Black women; that friction over accuracy has shaped the public case for and against further punitive measures such as advertiser boycotts, and it complicates attributing any commercial fallout to a single cause (NDTV; AEI; [2]; p1_s6).
5. Pro-Kirk defenders and organized movement response
Conservative allies and some cultural figures defended Kirk or framed him as supportive of Black conservatives; reporting on Turning Point USA and its post-assassination events shows a movement consolidating around Kirk’s memory rather than a broad, industry-wide commercial severing of ties with his outlets (Hindustan Times; The Atlantic; [8]; [9]1).
6. Limitations of the record and what would be needed to prove advertiser cutoffs
The supplied reporting documents reputational fights, political condemnation, fact-checking, individual firings related to the assassination aftermath, and partisan disputes over quotes [4] [7] [1], but none of these pieces provide direct evidence that mainstream advertisers or corporate sponsors formally ended advertising relationships with Kirk or his platforms specifically because of the Black-women remarks; proving such commercial disengagement would require corporate statements, ad-tracking data, or publicized sponsorship cancellations not present in the provided sources [4] [6].
Conclusion: what the evidence supports and what it does not
Based on the reporting supplied, there is clear documentation that Kirk’s remarks about specific Black women drew condemnation, fact-checking, and subsequent media controversies — and that the assassination and its aftermath generated separate personnel and institutional reprisals — but the sources do not show documented, named advertisers or organizations publicly cutting commercial ties with Kirk specifically over the Black-women remarks; the record instead shows contested narratives, isolated employment consequences tied to reactionary posts, and political denunciations [1] [4] [7] [5]. Any stronger claim about advertiser defections would require evidence not contained in these articles.