You've almost certainly haven't read enough
You are making a really simple and basic error.
How we talk about things influences how people think. Kirk could have discussed affirmative action in an interesting and less demeaning way. But he didn't. When Charlie Kirk took that line and decided to call black women stupid and unqualified, he played straight into the mindset of every bigot out there, and he thought it was
hilarious. He did the work of racists, and it's fine with him, because he got his cheap gotcha. You're just trying to pretend there aren't people who think that way... but that's just not true.
It's the same with many dogwhistles. They're not saying it...
and yet they totally are. It's specifically designed just so people get the meaning, and then apologists like you can come along later with the utterly ridiculous idea that your laborious fabrication is the only way anyone can interpret it. This is obviously stupid, because we all know that everyone who reads or hears the same stuff somehow manages to come out with a different idea about it. So people like you are wasting everyone's time claiming that there's only one true interpretation to something someone said. Then, we also know that there are people out there good at using this semantic uncertainty to manipulate - and indeed, this is exactly the sort of tactic developed by politicians, debaters like Kirk.
And then there's your other standard tactic at play, which is pretend everything exists in isolation so no-one looks at the big picture. It's so tiring.
But guess what, everything is interrelated. I repeat: Kirk promoted the Great Replacement theory, and that is a racist conspiracy. He opposed the Civil Rights Act. He really had a thing about black men "prowling" (I think that was the word) and trying to rape women because he kept going on and on about it. All of that racist and race-baiting applies context to everything else. He's either racist or he's appealing to racists, and the latter is good enough to call him a racist anyway. He played to a racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic galleryt. He regularly said stuff to demean, disrespect, and belittle. Even the little stuff. (Look no further than
this, recently posted in this forum: "cockroaches". Classy - how's that for respect for one's fellow humankind, and that's absolutely part of who he was.)
So yeah, he didn't have to do this, he could have been more thoughtful, respectful, but he wasn't. And when you look at all the stuff he said and did again and again, no remorse, no attempt to change... he was a bigot, and it worked for him.