Did Charlie Kirk make comments about black women lacking "processing power" and what was the full quote?

1. The line, verbatim and provenance

The clearest primary rendering published by fact‑checkers and news outlets reproduces Kirk’s words from his July 13, 2023 broadcast: “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously,” which Kirk introduced while criticizing what he presented as admissions of affirmative‑action benefits by several public figures and then played clips of their remarks ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

2. Who Kirk was talking about — not “all Black women,” but four named figures

Reporting across fact‑checkers and major outlets documents that Kirk’s target in that segment was a set of named, high‑profile Black women — Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — and that his commentary was framed as an attack on those individuals’ arguments about affirmative action or their public statements, rather than an explicit generalization about every Black woman ^{[1] [2] [6]}.

3. How the remark was transformed into a broader claim on social media

Within days of renewed circulation after Kirk’s September 2025 killing, social posts and some headlines paraphrased and amplified the line into the broader, more inflammatory version — “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously” — a condensation that stripped the original qualifiers and named targets and therefore presented a categorical insult to all Black women ^{[4] [6] [2]}.

4. Fact‑checks, corrections and dispute over framing

Major fact‑checking outlets and news organizations investigated the clip: Snopes and Lead Stories verified the audio and confirmed Kirk did use the “brain processing power” wording about specific figures ^{[1] [4]}, while the Financial Times and other newspapers issued corrections noting an initial misquote that suggested he’d spoken about “Black women” as a category when his remarks referred to specific individuals ^[5]. Some commentators and institutions disputed whether rounding the quote into a generalization was an error of context or an accurate summation of pattern and intent; conservative defenders decried how the clip was shared after his death, and critics pointed to the clip as evidence of longstanding demeaning rhetoric ^{[7] [6]}.

5. Who amplified the misquote and the downstream consequences

Reporting shows the broader paraphrase was widely shared on platforms such as Bluesky and X, including a post by veteran journalist Karen Attiah that presented the paraphrased line without annotation; that sharing became part of debates over editorial decisions after her subsequent firing from a newspaper, a controversy outlets connected to the misquotation and to broader reactions to Kirk’s assassination ^{[4] [6]}. The episode demonstrates how truncation and amplification on social platforms can convert a targeted insult into an apparently categorical slur, changing public perception and media responses ^{[4] [2]}.

6. Why precision matters: context, classification and public understanding

The distinction between “Kirk said this about those four named figures” and “Kirk said this about Black women generally” is not hair‑splitting: one is a documented public insult aimed at individuals; the other is a sweeping racialized claim that many fact‑checkers say was not what the audio shows — yet the latter is what many readers and social posts ultimately encountered, fueling broader outrage and actions that followed ^{[1] [5] [4]}.

Conclusion

The most accurate public record: Charlie Kirk uttered the “brain processing power” line in July 2023 about specific, named Black women while criticizing affirmative‑action arguments; subsequent social‑media condensation turned that line into a generalized statement about “Black women,” a mischaracterization that multiple outlets and corrections have since flagged ^{[1] [4] [5]}.