MONDAY: The "night assault" (and the madness) continue!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2025

What Dagen McDowell said: There's a reason why we keep citing the "night assault" which destroyed sacred Troy—the assault described by Professor Knox way back in 1990.

We do so because, at times like these, we humans are wired for incomprehension. Our wiring may keep us from being able to see what's actually happening all around us. An external comparison, perhaps from literature, may better equip us to see.

As described by Professor Knox, that ancient night assault was ugly and it was vast. It was a sweeping assault on every aspect of decency.

It was accompanied by unmistakable human madness. But so perhaps, is the situation being described in this new report from the New York Times:

Musk Team Seeks Access to I.R.S. System With Taxpayers’ Records

The Internal Revenue Service is preparing to give a team member working with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive taxpayer data, people familiar with the matter said.

The systems at the I.R.S. contain the private financial data tied to millions of Americans, including their tax returns, Social Security numbers, addresses, banking details and employment information.

[...]

Gavin Kliger, a young software engineer who was brought into the Office of Personnel Management as part of the DOGE effort, worked at I.R.S. headquarters on Thursday, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. He will be assigned to the I.R.S. as a senior adviser to the acting commissioner. The tax agency is still working out the exact terms of his work at the I.R.S., though he is expected to have broad access to its systems, according to the two people.

As of Sunday evening, he had not yet gained access to sensitive I.R.S. data, the two people said.

Is this a form of madness? Here's the dope on Gavin Kliger, according to the leading authority on this "young engineer:"

Gavin Kliger

Attended UC Berkeley, graduating in 2020. Problematic tweets and Substack post.

According to the leading authority, a young engineer is about to become a senior adviser! He's only four years out of college—and just for the record, just how "problematic" were those tweets and that post?

You can judge that for yourself! As one of its sources, the authority links to this brand-new report at Mother Jones:

DOGE Worker Says He Was Radicalized by Reading Writer Who Later Denied Holocaust

In a since-deleted Substack post, an engineer working for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) wrote about his radicalization, noting a key influence was an essay by Ron Unz—an infamous figure who has written about race science; donated money to the white nationalist website VDare, which according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a hate group; and has been accused by the Anti-Defamation League of “hardcore antisemitism,” including Holocaust denial.

The Substack post, titled “Why I Joined DOGE,” was written by DOGE engineer Gavin Kliger.

Kliger has already been in hot water. He also reportedly reposted white nationalist Nick Fuentes disparaging a Black child on his now-private X account. (On the account, Kliger called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a slur and demanded military tribunals and executions of undocumented migrants who commit crimes, according to Rolling Stone.)

The post was published Friday and was still available online Sunday morning around 9:30 a.m. ET. It was deleted on Sunday... 

If the Mother Jones reporting is accurate, this youngster may sound a bit shaky. The authority link to a second source—this report at Wired:

The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover

[...]

Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special adviser to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special adviser to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”

We haven't read the Substack post. Question:

If Kliger is given the kind of access described by the New York Times, could that be part of a "night assault" in the sense of Professor Knox's use of the term? 

Things are moving very quickly. Also, things are stunningly dumb. At long last, that brings us to the question of what Dagen McDowell said on the February 7 Gutfeld!

As we noted last week, the program's host had made an array of remarkable statements about the past conduct of USAID. The agency had been toppling foreign governments, he said, without providing any evidence. He then said that USAID had also tried to undermine the MAGA revolution here at home.

After delivering his "monologue," Gutfeld let each of his four stooges comment. He came to McDowell second. 

As always, McDowell was furious. She seemed to say she doesn't believe that USAID does any humanitarian work around the world at all. 

She seemed to say that the claim is fake. This is what was said:

GUTFELD (2/7/25): It makes you wonder. Was the humanitarian stuff just done so they could do these other things?

MCDOWELL: I don't even believe the humanitarian work actually happens. Because if you look at, say, Afghanistan—because USAID worked in all these war-torn areas to rebuild, say, Iraq and Afghanistan. What happens— 

You only get— 

It's the cheerleaders back here at home. They never track how the money is spent. Because you just spent the money. You don't detail where it went, because if you report on the outcomes, your budget's not going to get replenished. 

So in Afghanistan, for example, you would hear, "Ohhhh, the hospitals we built!" But you didn't hear—there weren't any doctors, or drugs, or even patients, in the hospital.

Or, "This school that we built!" But there weren't any teachers or students in the [struggles to suppress an F-bomb] school.

GUTFELD: [LAUGHTER]

MCDOWELL: But I have to stop you with the western North Carolina thing since I am one-sixteenth hillbilly—the rest is redneck tobacco farmer.

I wish they had gone to western North Carolina and for every USAID worker, the weepy con artists, they had gotten a flag-wavin', God-fearin' patriot hillbilly and let that man or that woman fire that worker and filmed it. Showing them the business end of what America really looks like—I mean, that would be the best TV series ever.

GUTFELD: Yes!

[AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]

For the record, the previous guest had referred to hurricane recovery efforts in western North Carolina. This explains the second part of McDowell's explosion.

McDowell hails from south central Virginia. She said she's one-sixteenth hillbilly. The rest is redneck tobacco farmer, she said.

At age 53, she's also co-host of several shows on Fox Business. Her remarkable fury is routinely apparent when she guests on the Gutfeld! show. Under current arrangements. this is part of what makes her such an enjoyable guest.

On this occasion, she made some typically strange accusations. She seemed to say that USAID constructs Potemkin projects around the world—schools which don't have any students, hospitals which don't have any doctors or patients.

No one asked her for the basis on which she would make such claims. Questions like that are no longer asked within the culture of "cable news" as performed on the fully Potemkin enterprise known as the Fox News Channel.

The fury took a different form as McDowell continued. She said she longed for the chance to see each of the "weepy con artists" at USAIDS fired, for later viewing on TV, by "a flag-wavin', God-fearin' patriot hillbilly." That's what she'd like to see. 

(Also, she said she knows what America really looks like. According to McDowell, America looks like her!)

Beyond that, we call your attention to her apparent struggle to suppress the F-bomb which she longed to let loose on the world.

In the transcript we've provided, you can see where the apparent struggle occurred. Due to a twist of fate at the Internet Archive, the struggle may not be quite as obvious there as it is in watching a full videotape.

In the famous Kubrick film, Dr. Strangelove struggled to keep himself from issuing a certain salute. To our eye and ear, McDowell struggled to keep herself from emitting an F-bomb as she furiously described the USAID schools—the schools which aren't actually there.

We're routinely amazed by McDowell's fury when she guests on Gutfeld! In our view, this sort of thing is obvious madness, and it's part of a "night assault."

The assault at Troy was an assault of The Late Bronze Age. The current assault is an assault of The Information Age.

This assault is happening around the clock. In large part due to Blue America's self-satisfaction and endless delusions, the assault by the Gutfelds, the Musks and McDowells will be hard to defeat.