Therapy, Grievance Culture, The Web: What's Melting the Left's Brains?

Summary

The Charlie Kirk Show – Episode Summary

Episode: Therapy, Grievance Culture, The Web: What's Melting the Left's Brains?
Date: January 14, 2026
Host: Charlie Kirk
Guests: Blake, Jonathan Alpert (psychotherapist)

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the cultural and psychological roots of modern left-wing activism—focusing on anti-ICE protests and the broader phenomenon of grievance culture among affluent liberals (“awf’ls”). Host Charlie Kirk and co-host Blake break down recent events, online rhetoric, and emerging mental health trends with guest psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert. The conversation dynamically explores how technologies, media echo chambers, and shifting social structures contribute to intense activism, “derangement,” and dehumanizing rhetoric, while also pivoting to national security issues like U.S. interest in Greenland.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Deconstructing Anti-ICE Activism and Left-Wing Mobilization

• Anti-ICE protests in cities like Minneapolis are described as organized, coordinated, and often led by a particular demographic: affluent, childless, liberal white women—termed “awf’ls.”
• Motivational Factors: A blend of online echo chambers, social media activism, and a perceived moral obligation or “grievance culture” drives participation.
• Operational Tactics: Protesters—particularly those referenced as “ICE Interrupters”—are trained to use their perceived privilege (“white privilege”) to shield illegal immigrants from law enforcement actions, sometimes encouraged to obstruct or even attack ICE personnel.

Notable Quote (on awf’ls):

"We have a scourge of tyrannical, often white, affluent ladies, leftist ladies, who are now being used as cannon fodder on the front lines of communist front groups attempting to attack and delegitimize ICE operations."
— Charlie Kirk (01:09)

2. Escalation to Dangerous Rhetoric and Violence

• Social media posts and activist rhetoric increasingly dehumanize ICE agents by equating them with Nazis or the Gestapo.
• Guests and recordings document explicit calls for violence against law enforcement.
• The episode underscores the psychological progression from online agitation to potential physical violence, highlighting the dangers of unmoderated echo chambers.

Memorable Coverage (on extreme rhetoric):

"Let's be honest, it's going to be to get violent. We got to get violent, people. And I'm tired of denying it... Peaceful protest only works if your enemy has a moral obligation to listen to it. They have none."
— Unidentified Female Speaker (11:19)

Timestamps for Violent Rhetoric:

• Calls to "run over" ICE agents: 08:56
• Reiterating “shoot ICE on sight” social media posts: 08:01
• Daily Beast article on doxxing ICE personnel: 12:12

3. The Role of Media and Narratives

• Hosts criticize mainstream and progressive media for perpetuating the Nazi/Gestapo comparison and warn of the real-world consequences of such dehumanization.
• Joe Rogan's recent comments critical of ICE raids are discussed and rebutted; Charlie Kirk asserts that the error rate in deportations is both minimal and justified given scale and crime rates.

Notable Quote (on media's impact):

"It shows the power of how media narratives frame people... Instead, the focus is endlessly ICE. ICE. ICE. The new Gestapo. ICE. ICE, ICE."
— Blake (15:53)

4. Mental Health, Grievance Culture & Therapy Nation

• Guest: Jonathan Alpert, psychotherapist and author of the upcoming book Therapy Nation, weighs in on the psychological drivers behind radical activism:
  • Echo chambers and grievance culture drive obsessive engagement.
  • Many activists are “victims of propaganda,” feeling moral duty to extreme action.
  • Alpert observes a rise in “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS) pathology, defining the last half-decade.
  • Anxiety, inability to sleep, and disrupted social/family ties are prevalent among patients fixated on political issues.

Notable Quote:

"We have grievance culture that has just run wild... People villainize a person, an organization... and then they just feel that it is absolutely their right to take action on it."
— Jonathan Alpert (20:35)

Stats:

"About 3/4 of my patients are impacted by this in some way... I even went so far as to say it's the defining pathology of the last half decade."
— Jonathan Alpert (30:33)

5. Echo Chambers, Alienation, and Societal Breakdown

• Echo chambers are seen as fueling emotional, irrational thinking over facts, contributing to activism that sometimes supplants traditional relationships and community.
  • Family and friendship are being deprioritized in favor of political alignment.

Discussion Highlight:

"One of the things that I urge my patients to think about is that family and friends should be more important than any public Political figure or political party. Unfortunately, we're not seeing that."
— Jonathan Alpert (24:36)

6. National Security Sidebar: Greenland and U.S. Geopolitical Posture

• The episode concludes with a discussion on the U.S. interest in purchasing Greenland for strategic/deterrence reasons.
  • The hosts analyze the historic, economic, and military implications.
  • Discussion of U.S.-Denmark relations, the Greenland independence movement, and potential consequences for NATO and global defense.

Trump's Public Statement (Read Aloud):

“The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of national security. It is vital for the golden dome.”
— Read by Blake (35:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• On awf’ls and protest culture:

"Affluent white female, liberal, awfl. But you pronounce it 'awful' for, well, pretty, pretty clear reasons."
— Blake (02:47)

• On propaganda and indoctrination:

"They're convinced that they are freedom fighters, that this is the modern day noble, virtuous cause that they have become wrapped up in for righteous reasons."
— Charlie Kirk (04:26)

• On the role of social media:

"Social media... just makes people feel. People can run their mouths in ways that I don't think they did before."
— Blake (11:01)

• On echo chambers:

"Part of the problem is social media. It's some media outlets, echo chambers are created and people are just surrounding themselves with people, like-minded people and data that's not entirely accurate."
— Jonathan Alpert (23:12)

• On loss of family and social cohesion:

"Family and friends should be more important than any public Political figure or political party. Unfortunately, we're not seeing that."
— Jonathan Alpert (24:36)

• On mental health pathology:

"I even went so far as to say it's the defining pathology of the last half decade."
— Jonathan Alpert (30:33)

• On political violence precursors:

"What I see in my practice is deeply concerning to me. We have people who are sick, they're staying up at night, they can't sleep at night, they're highly anxious..."
— Jonathan Alpert (21:00)

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Important Segments (Timestamps)

• [01:09] – Introduction to protests and characterization of "awf’ls"
• [05:22] – Joy Reid and others discuss the deliberate use of “white privilege” in anti-ICE activism
• [08:01] – Examples of calls for violence on social media
• [10:18] – Discussion transitions to media narratives & critiques of Joe Rogan
• [20:01] – Interview with Jonathan Alpert on psycho-social drivers of activism and mental instability
• [27:09] – Dissection of protest videos and the psychological leap to violence
• [32:41] – Geopolitical turn: Greenland, security, Trump administration's push

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Episode Tone & Style

The episode maintains Charlie Kirk’s signature combative conservative tone, blending analysis, cultural critique, and polemic. The discussion is energetic, with frequent rhetorical flourishes and a sense of urgency about cultural, political, and security developments.

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Takeaway

This episode offers a critical, insider conservative perspective on why radical activism among young, mostly affluent liberals has intensified, spotlighting social media’s role, the rise of grievance-centric identity, and the mental health consequences of an all-consuming political culture. The conversation is enriched by a professional psychological standpoint and capped with analysis of breaking national security news, connecting culture wars and geopolitics for listeners concerned with both domestic and international dynamics.

Transcript

[Charlie Kirk]

My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro American student organization in the country, fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You got to stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Turning Point USA College chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life. And I encourage you to do the same. Here I am, Lord.

[Blake]

Use me.

[Charlie Kirk]

Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. The Charlie Kirk show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, but the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends and viewers.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

All right. Welcome to the Charlie Kirk show. It's January 14, 2026. It's a new year, but the same old tactics are being deployed in the streets of American cities to battle deportations, mass deportations, something Charlie cared a lot about, something we at the show continue to care a lot about. I believe that deportations and immigration is the single most important issue. There's lots of important issues, but I believe it is the most important issue to fixing the country. It is the switch when flipped that could fix a number, if not all the ills that we are currently facing. So what is happening right now in the streets of Minneapolis? We have a scourge of tyrannical, often white, affluent ladies, leftist ladies, who are now being used as cannon fodder on the front lines of communist front groups attempting to attack and delegitimize ICE operations in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Portland, beyond Chicago, New York. And so we have to analyze what is actually happening. How are they going about recruiting this whole crop of women? Often it's men, to be fair, but it is often women, often childless or women, often white women, that are putting their bodies on the line to impede, obstruct, harass, harangue, and attack law enforcement personnel in the streets of America's cities. So, Blake, the question then is, what is an awful? I want to start with our base operating language here so that everybody's on the same page.

[Blake]

So an awful is a slang term. It's probably about a decade old at this point.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Point.

[Blake]

Yes, and it's short for affluent White female, liberal, awfl. But you pronounce it awful for, well, pretty, pretty clear reasons.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Yeah.

[Blake]

And it's a tight, It's a type we see over and over again. We're seeing it in these ICE protests, but you saw it a ton during blm. Most people probably know an awful or two and it's, it's contained within that. So affluent white female, liberal. It's, it's generally. They don't need to be ultra rich, but generally at least middle class, reasonably secure. They're very much the, the stereotypical intense, you know, put up in this house, we believe, signs.

[Jonathan Alpert]

Yes.

[Blake]

But they do it with usually within a pretty strong cocoon of security. So, you know, we'll put like immigrants welcome in their neighborhood that has a pretty low immigrant population that's very secluded from America's. Yeah, they still live in a neighborhood that looks like it's 1958. They, you know, will really hate on police and then live in a suburb that's very far away from anywhere that the police are really needed that much. Very militant about. You know, probably spend a lot of too much time on social media. So they get very whipped up on every cause. They change their profile pic for every new thing, every new thing, every new scandal, every, every to do. And they have, they tend to have enough free time to get very involved in activism. So they go to marches. So 10 years ago they would be. Or 15 years ago they would be marching for gay rights. 10 years ago they'd be getting whipped up for BLM, anti Trump. And you know, today, now they're going around saying that ICE is the Gestapo.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Yeah, Nazis. They're referring to themselves as the French Resistance, which the French Resistance obviously was fighting the Nazis. So it's a. This is an MSNBC now msn Ms. Now reporter referring to them as this. But they are organized. They are being trained. They are being dispatched in a coordinated effort to harass, harangue, attack ICE officers. They are convinced that they are freedom fighters, that this is the modern day noble, virtuous cause that they have become wrapped up in for righteous reasons. And it's incredible the number of people that they can convince that this is in fact true. And what's wild is you have black women like Joy Reid encouraging white women to put their bodies on the line, their white bodies on the line. Play cut316 this woman was part of.

[Unidentified Female Speaker]

A group of people who they trained to try to be ICE interrupters. And what they try to do is observe what ICE is doing, film them and try to Use their white privilege to be honest. Their mainly white people.

[Jonathan Alpert]

Which is what we ask.

[Unidentified Female Speaker]

Which is what we ask them to do, right?

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Female Speaker]

Because black people, like we can't get on. We can't put our bodies on the line because cops will shoot us. And so the presumption had been particularly a white woman. Cuz remember, part of the rationale for doing this with ICE is to save white women, pristine white women from being ravaged by, you know, criminal brown men. So they, white women have been taking the lead.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Gosh, the race Lady Joy Reid, she continues to haunt us from beyond cable news and the nightly broadcast. But why this is important, Blake, is because they are actually encouraging real crazy people to. And I believe this is the entire game is they're going to say all these crazy things. You've got Jacob Frey saying, get out. You're not welcome here. You're going to have everybody comparing them to Gestapo and Nazis and all of this. And then you're going to have actual crazy people. You shake the tree long enough, some are going to fall out and do crazy stuff that actually are advocating for killing, shooting, ramming, running over ICE agents 327.

[Unidentified Male Speaker]

Shame on them. Because we're gonna run right over them, aren't we? We are, right. And we're gonna stand up and we're gonna fight like hell every single day. Are you ready to fight?

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Male Speaker]

Are you ready to fight?

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Completely deranged, off their rocker, off their meds. There's more examples.

[Blake]

We got so many chantings. Besides the point, it's. There was a reporter from the Free Press who has been in Minneapolis and talking to people and he spoke with ICE agents who say that they're having put up 347 there. He says that these protesters are loosening lug nuts on their car. On their cars, like when they're in parking lots, they're tracking federal vehicles using air tags. They use whistles to kind of stalk them and just like blow them constantly. To be like ISIS here. It's like a constant attempt at harassment of law enforcement, hindrance of law enforcement. And of course we see them blocking roads, ramming attacks on cars and the most extreme outcomes, which I don't think awfuls are going to do this, but this is going to be the Tyler Robinson types. There's going to be someone who's whipped up about this. They've read too many posts on Blue sky, seen too many tiktoks and they're mentally unwell and they're going to take a rifle and shoot these guys. Yeah, and I don't think you can, frankly, when you just. You can go on Blue sky and find people saying shoot ICE on sight. They are literal Gestapo agents. That's from someone calling herself Lady Rain.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

She.

[Blake]

Her has an anime avatar that might. That might be a biological male.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

And we have this.338 through 341. Just roll through some of these. Literally just organize and shoot ICE on sight. They are literal Gestapo agents. Go to the next one. I'm sorry. Alliance against Gustavo. Gun violence. But with the recent ICE murder and shootings, I think police organizations across the country should have every officer shoot ICE agents on site.

[Blake]

I've seen way too many vids of ICE Nazis brutalizing us, murdering us. It would not surprise me to see Americans randomly shoot ICE Nazis on site in an effort of self protection, survival.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Yeah. I mean, and here we go. There's another. Another example. 328. This is a TikTok leftist saying. The big lesson from Minneapolis is that you got to get your car worked on so you can drive faster over an ICE agent. 328.

[Unidentified Male Speaker]

All we're learning from this is that you should hit the gas. If they're there. You should. You should run them over. You should run them over with your car. And you should do it quickly before they can shoot you. I. I have to go to my mechanic. I have to get my car fixed so that I can drive faster just in case. This is insane.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

You.

[Unidentified Male Speaker]

You should hit them. You should hit them. They will say you hit them anyway. You should hit them with your car.

[Blake]

The best way to not have a bad interaction with ICE is to just let ICE do the job. Better yet, let ICE go to jails to arrest. To arrest the illegals who end up there. Go to prisons to arrest the illegals who wind up there. Go to court to arrest the illegals who wind up there.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Well, now we're gonna.

[Blake]

And then you don't need to do raids in random neighborhoods.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Well, and I want to talk about this because Joe Rogan has gotten into the fray, basically saying that these raids are too extreme, they're too brutal. And I couldn't disagree more with Joe Rogan. And to Blake's point, if Minneapolis wants raids and wants street raids and, you know, abductions or apprehensions on the streets to stop, then maybe they should coordinate with ice. Maybe they should coordinate with DHS when they actually pull somebody over. Arrest them, put them in jail. You could do that securely, safely. But they were refusing to do that. They would rather release the criminals back onto the Streets of Minneapolis. And that's what these women are fighting for.

[Charlie Kirk]

If you're tired of watching this country drift away from the values that made it great, it's time to get involved. That's why I stand with amac, the association of Mature American Citizens.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Charlie loved this country, and he loved partnering with organizations that truly stand for what makes America great. One of our most trusted partners, amac, the association of Mature American Citizens, is doing something special in Charlie's honor. AMAC is offering free memberships to all ages. No credit card, no strings attached. Just a chance to stand for faith, family, and freedom. Join this movement. Go to AMAC US Charlie today. That is AMAC US forward slash Charlie today. Blake, you had a clip that you wanted to throw, too, and I think it's important.

[Blake]

Yes. So we were just. We were showing all of the escalating, insane rhetoric, but this one is really, really deranged. And it's a good example of social media. Just makes people feel. People can run their mouths in ways that I don't think they did before. Let's play clip 344.

[Unidentified Female Speaker]

I don't really care about the consequences anymore.

[Lane Schoenberger]

I don't care.

[Unidentified Female Speaker]

We need to kill these people. We've had three people die in, like, 72, and we've had over almost 30 die in the since in the last year to a group of quote unquote law enforcement that has basically just buffed up mall cops, right? Who are gun triggering, happy, proud boys. Let's call them what they are. It's the proud boys. Why do you think we didn't hear about them? They're Nazis. Peyton said it best. They're Nazis. And the only way to stop this, let's be honest, is going to be to get violent. We got to get violent people. And I'm tired of denying it, and I'm tired of y' all being about it. Grow up. We're not gonna get through this. Holding hands. Peaceful protest only works if your enemy has a moral obligation to listen to it. They have none. You guys are sitting there holding up signs and saying, oh, I'm mad at you.

[Blake]

You're pathetic. Burn something, Burn something, shoot something. And it's just clear what they want. There's also this article that happened yesterday in the Daily Beast that had me really angry from a guy, Tom Latcham, in case someone can, I don't know, go harass that guy. It's personal. Details of thousands of border and I. Border Patrol and ICE goons allegedly leaked in huge data breach. That's the headline ICE goons. And it's all about. There's some foreign website, I believe it's operated out of the Netherlands and it's called ICE List. And it's literally just like a wiki style database of every single person who works at DHS that they can get information on. And they get their names, they're getting their phone numbers, they're using that to cross reference and get their addresses. The goal is to get as much information as possible about every single person who works with ICE and with the Border Patrol so that someone can watch that video, get all worked up, find the person at ICE who lives closest to them, go there and shoot them in the face.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Yeah, and this is really why you're getting at the core of why this is important. I mean, we saw this with Charlie, right, that the left used dehumanizing language about Charlie's a Nazi, Charlie's a racist, Charlie's a bigot, Charlie's a hater. You know, even Tyler Robinson, there's just some hate you can't negotiate out or something like that. Right. That was a statement. And that's what they're doing here, is they're intentionally dehumanizing conservatives. They're intentionally dehumanizing ICE agents, law enforcement personnel, federal personnel in order to justify their murder, in order to justify doxing them, harassing them, harassing their family, attacking their family. Who knows what these psychos are capable of. And again, I go back to this fact that if these jurisdictions do not want raids, at least at this scale, then they would cooperate with ice. They are, they are actually letting out onto the streets murderers, child abusers, child rapists. They are letting them back out on the streets and instead of deporting them, they have them all over the country now. We're up to about 650,000 deportations, actually above that. Now. Those are forceful removals from the country. 650,000 of them, according to Tom Holm and Borders are Tom holm. And about 65 to 70% of those are actual criminals that have committed crimes once breaking the law to get in here in the first place. Right. So they're all criminals because they, they got here without us welcoming them or doing it the right way. But then 65 to 70% of the 650,000 that have been deported are actual criminals on the streets. And I have to come for Joe Rogan because he is simply wrong on this issue. Play Cut 336.

[Joe Rogan]

You don't want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching people up. Many of which turn out to actually be U.S. citizens. They just don't have their papers on them. Are we really gonna be the Gestapo? Where's your papers? Is that what we've come.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

All right, Joe, I'm a fan. Charlie was a fan, an admirer. But you're wrong. Out of the 650,000 forceful deportations, approximately 170 of those apprehensions were temporarily misapprehensions, meaning that they were mistaken identities. They were eventually released. That is a success rate of over 99.9%. To demand 100%, you know, I would say accurate apprehensions. To demand 100%, accuracy is unreasonable. And a scale of this deportation option, it shows.

[Blake]

It shows the power of how media narratives frame people. Because how often do you think the police arrest the wrong person in just normal law enforcement?

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

All the time.

[Blake]

All the time. Oh, we thought you were involved in this thing. We were mistaken. You have to let them out. We. We went into some. There was a fight, for example, and we arrested everyone in the fight. And we later deduced actually only some of them were responsible for starting this fight. This happens all the time. Or they round up a bunch of kids, and actually only some of those kids were being troublemakers. That happens. Happens all of the time. And frankly, you know, I bet the media could make a gigantic whip people up into a mob about that if they really wanted to. And instead, the focus is endlessly ice. Ice. Ice. The new Gestapo. Ice. Ice, ice. So, in fact, we did this. They did this with police. From 2013 through 2020, they whipped people up against police. We got the George Floyd moment. Crime doubled overnight. And then people thought, oh, wait, actually, oh, wait. The police were just. They were lying to us about the police the whole time. And now they're just running the same operation on ice. And unfortunately, there's just a lot of people. I think Joe Rogan is very symbolic of somewhat less engaged voters. Maybe I'll just say it like lower information voters, and just. They're easily swayed one way or the other by a narrative, especially if it's a novel narrative or something they haven't quite seen before. So I think if they were doing this to normal cops, he would recognize the pattern. But ICE isn't normal cops. It's slightly different. It's a new issue.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

And.

[Blake]

And it slightly alters their brain, but, yeah, they're not gonna be 100% effective on these things.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Well, listen, a temporary apprehension in the course of 650,000, plus forceful deportations of people that shouldn't be here 65 to 70% of them are criminals. I'll take that success rate any day. And if you wanna know why we're doing this, it's because Joe Biden let in millions of illegals. They started the problem, we're fixing it. Get out of the way.

[Lane Schoenberger]

This is Lane Schoenberger, chief investment officer and founding partner of Y Refi. It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turningpoint and for Charlie to endorse us. His endorsement means the world to us and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come. Now hear Charlie in his own words tell you about why Refi.

[Charlie Kirk]

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[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

I think Blake, you've done a good job sort of, I think diagnosing or describing the avatar of a lot of these people that we see distilling their general traits in culture. Because there are stereotypes for a reason, because they often are true. Correct. Now this doesn't just impact women. It's not just women that are getting co opted by these communist front groups to go put their body on the line like cannon fodder to fight ice or whatever playing GI Jane in the streets. It is men too. And it help us diagnose actually what's going on here because I think it's a larger societal illness, a mental illness genuinely. We call it Trump Derangement syndrome. But it's like something even bigger than that. And it's enveloped in kind of an anti colonial thing. And an anti western anti white thing is psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert. He's the author of a book that comes out in May called Therapy Nation. I thought it was pertinent and relevant to our discussion today. Jonathan, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show. It's great to have you here.

[Jonathan Alpert]

Yeah, thanks for having me, Andrew. I appreciate it.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Yeah, absolutely. And so you wrote this book, Therapy Nation. You've kind of gone viral a couple times in the beginning of the year and end of last year, talking about some of these, I guess, mental ailments that we see in the social media era, this hyper online era. What do you make of these young people, often on the left, that are so motivated by the propaganda that they're willing to go literally ram ice officers, put their bodies on the line, risk their lives by playing stupid games? What do you make of it?

[Jonathan Alpert]

Yeah, and you have to really examine how we got to the point where people are willing to cross police lines and put themselves in such a harmful position. And, you know, it's a tragedy what happened in Minnesota, and it shouldn't have happened, but it did. And we have to look at what's going on in people's heads. And we have grievance culture that has just run wild. And if you look at the Luigi Mangione case, that's always a good example. You know, you have someone who felt it was his right, his duty to take out this CEO of the UnitedHealthcare. There are a million different things he could have done instead of killing this guy, but he chose to do this. And what happens is people villainize a person, an organization, a company, a politician, and then they just feel that it is absolutely their right to take action on it. And we've seen great tragedies as a result of this type of deranged thinking. And you're right, I did write a piece in the Wall Street Journal talking about Trump Derangement Syndrome. And I made it clear that it's not an actual diagnosis. But what I see in my practice is deeply concerning to me. We have people who are sick, they're staying up at night, they can't sleep at night, they're highly anxious, they feel that they're empowered and they can just take action. And it's a real concern of mine and the mental health profession, my profession really needs to take a hard look at what's going on with these people.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Yeah, I mean, to me, Jonathan, it feels like these groups, these radical leftist groups, by the way, that we need to root out the funding networks. Treasury's working on that. We're going to have some folks from treasury soon talking to them about how the progress is going about rooting out the funding networks and the, the different connections Right. We got Ms. ICE Watch that's actually training these agitators and activists on how to disrupt ICE proceedings and ICE operations in cities like Minneapolis and Portland and elsewhere. But it feels to me that they are being preyed on. These women are being preyed on. What makes them so vulnerable? And this is men too, to be fair, it's men and women, but what makes them so vulnerable? Because Blake here, who's I think defined it really well, a lot of these people are sort of cocooned in communities or backgrounds that we're safe, that we're thriving, that we're happy in many ways. And yet they are so alienated from America or so antagonistic to America that they feel like this is some virtuous cause. Why Are they vulnerable?

[Jonathan Alpert]

Dr. Yeah, and you're right, it is both men and women and everything in between, of course. And I think part of the problem is social media. It's some media outlets, echo chambers are created and people are just surrounding themselves with people, like minded people and data that's not entirely accurate. So many of my patients over the past several years have talked to me about how they think that Trump is Hitler, they think he's a Nazi, he's going to round up certain segments of the population, send them off to a faraway island. And, and we all know this isn't true, but some people actually believe this. And when all you do is surround yourself with like minded people, you actually do start to believe that and it becomes easier to villainize Trump or ICE officers or police officers. And I think that's partially what we have playing out on the streets across America and specifically in Minnesota.

[Blake]

Jonathan, does this, is there like any end stage for this? It just, it feels so, it feels like this does end in some sort of like catastrophic mental meltdown. I mean, we've seen some of these people who, they just seem super genuinely mentally unwell. Is this a phase that passes and they get over it? Does it get worse and worse? I guess it just doesn't seem super stable to me.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Is there healing?

[Jonathan Alpert]

Well, it's, it's, it's definitely not stable. And I've appeared on Fox TV a number of times and I've discussed how political division is wreaking havoc on our society. And we just came out of the holiday season and I had patients who refused to attend holiday dinner with their Trump voting uncle or their progressive cousin. And this really needs to end. One of the things that I urge my patients to think about is that family and friends should be more important than any public Political figure or political party. Unfortunately, we're not seeing that. And it's reached a bit of a fever pitch over the past few years. So people really need to get back to what's important to them. And honestly, most of my patients are too busy trying to earn a living and support their families than to go on the streets and protest law enforcement officers.

[Blake]

Well, so you say the family and friend part is important. Why do you think we've gotten away from that? We've talked about that on the show a lot. Charlie would talk about that a lot. That there is that loss of family. It seems so widespread, though, that it clearly seems systematic, institutional, societal. I'm not sure. People. It seems like people just can't have the friends and family that they used to. Everyone's too online. Is that the case, do you feel?

[Jonathan Alpert]

Yeah. And people are. They're not looking at facts and data. They're looking. They're looking at the situation through the lens of emotion. And that's really largely what's driving a lot of the behaviors that we're seeing playing out, a lot of the pathological behaviors. And if people could get back to friends, family, kids, passions, hopefully that don't include politics, I think we'd get back to a much better place as a nation.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

So this is the new clip that's going around. And obviously the death of Renee Goode. We do not celebrate that. We actually feel terrible that she was convinced that this was a good idea for her to go in the streets and obstruct ICE officers and that it ended in her death. And we think that's a tragedy. That being said, there's another video that seems to be riling everybody up. My question for you on the other side of this video is when does activism, agitation turn into direct and outright violence, and what are the precursors for that? 334 to move my car.

[Unidentified Male Speaker]

I am disabled.

[Blake]

I have a brain injury.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Stay back.

[Unidentified Male Speaker]

I am autistic and I have a brain injury. Put me down. I was just trying to get to the doctor.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

So she was blocking ICE agents in the street. She was told to get out of the way. She didn't obey commands, which seems to be a theme here. I don't know if they're getting trained to intentionally disobey law enforcement commands and orders, but this is the video that is now being used to rile up more activists, more agitation, more agitprop, if you will. Is this what they do intentionally so that a few crazies become willing to use actual violence?

[Jonathan Alpert]

Yeah, I actually Think that's part of what's going on here. I think these people have simply lost sight of morals and what's important, and we have laws in place for a reason. And I think they're just overlooking the fact that these laws exist. And, you know, if these people are parents, if they're spouses, I don't think that's coming into their thinking in that moment when they decide to violate or not obey the law enforcement officers. But that shows you just how powerful this is. People are willing to sacrifice, indirectly, unconsciously, their lives for this cause that's not even rooted in fact. So it's deeply concerning to me as a mental health professional, what we're seeing play out on the streets. It used to be that you would go out there and make some noise and get your statements out there and get your thoughts out there, but now we have people that are actually risking their lives, and that's a very dangerous place to be.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Yeah. And I guess the question is, you know, this hits home for us personally with what happened with Charlie, is this dehumanizing language ultimately makes some of these crazy people think that they're doing something righteous. When they use violence, when you call them Gestapo, when you call them Nazis, what are the precursors? What do you need to look for with people that could be actually turning violent and using guns, cars, whatever. Yeah.

[Jonathan Alpert]

And that's what I saw with President Trump as well. We had people that would just demonize him. They were convinced that he was a Nazi, a dictator, and that just gave them the right in their pathologic mind to take action. I think these people lack purpose in their lives. I think there's underlying anxiety, depression. There's a lot of catastrophic thinking, a whole lot of drama in their lives. And these people largely need an object to displace that onto. And we saw it here in New York with the election of. With Mamdani, and the hatred towards wealthy people. It almost seems like they always need someone to blame for their own shortcomings. There was once a time when we would look at wealthy people and feel inspired by them and try to figure out how we could get to that place. But now in some people's mind, we go right towards hatred. So admiration doesn't seem to exist these days.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Doctor, you said that 75% of your patients, and this is one of your viral stories, have what you would call tds. You know, you're saying it's not an actual diagnosis, not clinical, but this is what you would describe about 75%. Is that right?

[Jonathan Alpert]

Yeah, and it's not an actual diagnosis, but a lot of what I'm seeing, the symptoms, the high anxiety, people rearrange in their lives, deciding who they date, who they're friends with, whether they can take a vacation or not. These are pretty significant actions that are happening. And I would say about 3/4 of my patients are impacted by this in some way. And I even went so far as to say it's the defining pathology of the last half decade.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Well, hopefully we can get through this. Doctor, thank you for your time. We appreciate your insight. All right, God bless you and we'll.

[Charlie Kirk]

Talk to you soon.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Thank you.

[Jonathan Alpert]

Take care, guys.

[Blake]

Bye bye.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

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[Charlie Kirk]

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[Blake]

So while we've been discussing all of this drama with ice, there's other drama unfolding in the furthest hyperborean north.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

With ice. With ice.

[Blake]

A lot of ice.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Not ice.

[Blake]

No, true, true story. So Greenland, the legend goes. I don't remember if this is true, but the legend goes, Iceland is there, that's full of ice. And then Eric the Red sails further and discovers Greenland and he names, supposedly he names it Greenland to scam people into wanting to move there. Yeah, they did have Norse settlements there for a long time. It didn't work out great for them. They were. I believe eventually they were. They were conquered. They kind of. They had too much inbreeding and they kind of fell into societal decay. There were only a few thousand people there, and they were eventually conquered and killed by the Inuits, who were not the original native inhabitants either. And then eventually Denmark reacquired it. So it's not that they were always there. They actually reacquired it later after this. They've been holding it a long time. As I'm sure all of you know by now, President Trump has become very interested in acquiring Greenland. There's a lot of reasons to do that. It is super far north. And so a lot of you may know, other than the Alaska near, being near Russia. The fastest way for America to European Russia is straight north over the North Pole. That matters a lot for things like nuclear submarines, ICBMs, all of those things. It's just fastest point between two areas on the globe. And so we've had military bases in Greenland ever since it, throughout the Cold War. It's all noteworthy. On top of that, it's a big chunk of land. There are potentially a lot of natural resources beneath the thick Greenland ice sheet. It could be economical to extract those someday as other sources of resources run out. So President Trump's been very interested in that. Today the Danish Foreign Minister was in the United States in the Eisenhower building to have a meeting with J.D.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Vance.

[Blake]

J.D. vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. We sounds like we're going to have a press statement from those Danish ministers any minute now. It'll be interesting what they say.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

We've heard that it went very well.

[Blake]

We've heard. Yeah, we have it. We have a source who is at the meeting, who saw what the Vice President and what Marco Rubio did. Remember, they're supposed to be in a feud with each other, but they seem to be working.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

They're not.

[Charlie Kirk]

They're not.

[Blake]

Of course they're not. They are allies. They are working together on this.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

They're very close, actually.

[Blake]

Yeah, of course they are. And apparently they have made us proud on this one. It's very interesting what's going on. The White House, it's clear this is a passion project of the President. Just today, the White House tweeted, which way, Greenland man? And it's two kind of sled dog things at the Greenland flag. And, you know, you can go with America or with China, Russia. And that's the line President Trump was taking today. He also posted this on Truth this morning.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

The United States, throw it up.

[Blake]

The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of national security. It is vital for the golden dome. That's his missile defense shield that we are building. NATO should be leading the way for us to get it. If we don't, China or Russia will. And that is not going to happen militarily. Without the vast power of the United States, much of which I built during my first term and I'm now bringing to a new and even higher level. NATO would not be an effective force or deterrent, not even close. They know that and so do I. NATO becomes more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the United States. Anything less than that is unacceptable. And then, as always, thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald Trump. So this is, it's all very interesting. I think the President is right. It makes more sense for Greenland to be with the United States. What I do worry is he is definitely making this hard sell on it. He's being very aggressive with Greenland, being very aggressive with the Europeans, and maybe I'm a softy. I think there's a very strong win, win, win case. And you see the echoes of that in what he's saying, which is that it would make NATO and our defense stronger if it's with the United States in some sort of permanent arrangement, as is. We have the bases there. We've always had military access to it.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Especially after World War II.

[Blake]

Exactly.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Truman negotiated this.

[Blake]

But I think there's an active Greenland independence movement. And I think people who do the math, they wonder, well, if Greenland were to get become independent, it's not very big. Its population is under a hundred thousand people. There's fewer people. There's fewer people in it than in Tempe. There's fewer people there than in. I think there's probably individual. There's individual square miles of New York City that have more people than Greenland does. And so if you do the math on this, it's just an island that big is not going to be a truly independent country. It's going to be dependent on somebody. The same way a lot of Pacific islands are basically dependent on the United States or on Australia. And so it's going to be dependent on someone if it became independent, it could be that it will fall under Russian or Chinese sway. They might just back up a dump truck of money and say, we're going to try to buy you out. Or they might just bribe people. There's not a lot of people. You could bribe the entire government, something like that. And so Trump is saying that's not an acceptable outcome. But he could also point out Greenland is basically a welfare ward of Denmark. Denmark does not profit off of this arrangement.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

They spend 4 billion a year, billions.

[Blake]

A year propping it up. America is far more capable of handling that expense. Oh well, we have to support 55,000 mostly welfare dependents. We do that in a lot of Chicago suburbs too. And so we're able to bear that cost more. And we can say green Denmark, thank you for doing this. You're a great ally. Here's a giant pile of money. And also we'll guarantee a giant pile of money for the Greenlanders. Like we can give them more money than you do and we get better security. I think there's a very strong win, win, win case to be made here. And what I think would be the worst outcome is just if this turns into some stupid fight. And that's what we don't want is as an example, let's say we make it so anti us like nationalism in Europe is now associated with being on the left and against America. And this allows the left to win just enough elections for them to great replace their entire populations.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

A Pyrrhic victory.

[Blake]

Very much a Pyrrhic victory if you're a European nationalist.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Yeah, well. And so I think the question that a lot of people have is right now we have access to the bases. So we do have some sort of military foothold there. We could build more potentially. I'm sure Denmark would be willing to negotiate it. Why push for full ownership?

[Blake]

I think it's that independence question that there's that lack of permanency to it. Anything that is not a truly permanent relationship can be changed. And there is that independence movement in Greenland. And once they're an independent actor, anything can happen. If you want an example of how these, of how very long term arrangements can change Britain, when they had Hong Kong in the south of China, they made a 99 year lease. And the story goes that they made it 99 years because permanent felt weird. And the Guy thought, well, 99 years is basically permanent, right? 99 years was not permanent. It expired and they gave up Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China and a long term military base in Greenland. That can change after one election in Denmark or after one independence referendum, Greenland.

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Well said.

[Blake]

And that is why President Trump, President Trump knows the value of permanency. It is a real interest here. And we just have to hope that Marco Rubio and the vice president are able to make that strong pitch to the Danish government?

[Charlie Kirk (Host)]

Well, so far indications are that it was a very positive meeting. So we're gonna wait and see what those press statements indicate. Hopefully that they are positive. And listen, at some point, you have to give this to the greenlanders themselves. There's 57,000 of them. They probably do are incentivized by a payday coming up if they link arms with the United States in a permanent fashion.

[Jonathan Alpert]

For more on many of these stories.

[Blake]

And news you can trust, go to charliekirk.

[Jonathan Alpert]

Com.