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Kash Patel is vying with one of Donald Trump's other insiders for the CIA deputy director post.

Patel became a Trump ally when he coordinated with former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) to fight back against special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election. Patel pressed to have all of the information around the Russia probe declassified, thinking it would expose wrongdoing in the intelligence community, CNN reported in 2020.

Patel is fighting with Cliff Sims, Trump's former deputy director of National Intelligence for Strategy and Communications, over the post, Politico reported Tuesday. The report characterized the position as "one of the most sought-after national security posts."

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Patel was teased as a possible pick to head the FBI, but it never happened. One of his more controversial positions involves jailing journalists, something he proposed to Steve Bannon last year.

Trump insiders told Politico that both men are "angering others who feel they're using their roles on the transition to undermine any would-be contenders."

The post "wields enormous influence inside the U.S. intelligence community," reported Politico.

"The frustration toward Sims ... and Patel, the firebrand former House Intelligence Committee staffer and Pentagon official, stems from the fact that both are helping the transition interview candidates for the CIA role," the report said, citing those in the transition.

“The issue that a lot of us have is that these people are involved in staffing national security jobs, and at the same time, they’re also promoting themselves for the same roles,” said one of the individuals who spoke to Politico.

Patel is known for "fighting dirty," so there's a concern that he's leaking damaging stories about Sims. After leaving the White House, Trump was furious with Sims when he published a tell-all memoir in 2019. At this point, however, many former officials have published memoirs about their political lives and their work with Trump.

At the time, White House officials described Trump as “very p---ed off” and “really hopping mad” after reading excerpts of the tell-all book.

The current deputy, David S. Cohen, helped craft Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act, which dealt with money laundering. He then went on to work as the assistant secretary for Terrorist Financing at the Treasury Department, the under-secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Neither Sims nor Patel has any experience working on domestic or global terrorism. Trump's previous appointees during his first administration had experience working in the CIA.

Transition spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, refused to comment about the two men, saying only that “remaining decisions will continue to be announced" when made.

Read the full report here.

Pro-MAGA TV host Gina Loudon accused the movie "Wicked" of "racism" against white people after she mistakenly claimed actress Ariana Grande was Hispanic.

"Wicked, the movie broke box office records," Loudon announced Tuesday on her Real America's Voice program. "I saw it, but I was very excited at the idea of seeing the interpretation of this. But I should have known it's Holly-weird."

Loudon claimed Hollywood made the movie "woke in the ways that they could think of."

"Let's just start with the fact that they have Ariana Grande, who is obviously a Hispanic woman, playing the part of a ditzy, blonde, white really villain, when it comes right down to it, for this particular movie," the host said. "The racism and the racial appropriation I just thought was offensive, frankly."

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"All white people aren't dumb and evil," she added. "And I just get kind of sick of that storyline."

Grande is Italian-American. Her family is said to descend from Sicily and Abruzzo.

Watch the video below from Real America's Voice or at this link.

A Biden administration plan to extend a $6 billion loan for an electric vehicle manufacturer to build an E.V. factory in Georgia sent MAGA world into a tailspin Tuesday.

The plan announced Monday is reportedly part of a push to lock in Democratic climate policies before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House. But not everybody was on board, with the move stoking speculation that the loan was a veiled political attack at one of Trump's main supporters – Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

“Biden is forking over $6.6B to EV-maker Rivian to build a Georgia plant they’ve already halted,” Vivek Ramaswamy wrote to his followers on X. “One ‘justification’ is the 7,500 jobs it creates, but that implies a cost of $880k/job which is insane. This smells more like a political shot across the bow at @elonmusk & @Tesla.”

That sentiment was echoed by numerous conservative social media users.

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“It’s clearly an attack on Musk for his endorsement of Trump,” X user Paul A. Szypula wrote in a reply to Ramaswamy. Notably, Ramaswamy and Musk were both tapped by Trump to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to explore ways to slash government spending.

And at least one Republican member of Congress thinks the federal loan to Rivian is a waste of government money.

“Why not just cut each person a $880,000 check?!” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) posted on social media. “The absurdity of this is the exact type of insanity that we have to stop. I can tell you right now Georgians do not support Rivian and are sick and tired of seeing tax dollars handed over to this FAILING company, federal & state!”

Greene was recently named chair of the new subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, which is expected to work with Musk's DOGE.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is asking her fans to pay at least $250 for personal advice and pep talks on the Cameo platform.

In a welcome video, Boebert explained the services she was offering to paying customers.

"Hey, Cameo, it's your girl from Colorado, Lauren Boebert," she said. "Whether you or someone you know needs an America First pep talk, if you want to surprise friends or family with a message for a special day, or if you just want to know my thoughts on whatever's on your mind, Cameo is the place to connect with me."

Boebert's Cameo page said the lawmaker was willing to "mention inside jokes, share words of wisdom," or use "signature catchphrases."

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The video request form allowed customers to specify a gender, including "they/them."

Semafor reporter Kadia Goba noted that the House Ethics Committee allows members of Congress to earn up to $31,805 from outside income.

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) also recently joined Cameo after withdrawing as President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for attorney general.

Watch the video below or at this link.

A pair of right-wing scholars from the American Enterprise Institute, Marc Thiessen and Danielle Pletka, made a plea to President Joe Biden in The Washington Post on Monday: Pardon Donald Trump on your way out the door.

This comes as Trump's remaining criminal cases appear to be in varying stages of dead or in limbo following his re-election — which they argue should be defeated outright to let America heal.

"From a legal standpoint, Trump does not need a presidential pardon. Special counsel Jack Smith is in the process of shutting down his federal investigations. If Smith does not close his cases, Trump can simply fire him the second he takes office. At the state level, Biden has no pardon power, but the cases against Trump appear to be falling apart," they wrote.

However, they argued that the country as a whole would be unified by this decision.

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Their key argument is that in doing so, Biden could head off a cycle of partisan use of the state against political candidates: "Absent decisive action, we could find ourselves at the start of a vicious cycle, in which Republicans now argue they are justified in weaponizing the justice system to go after Democrats, and Democrats then feel free to retaliate when they regain power — sending the country spiraling into a miasma of partisan litigation."

Such a move, which was also previously urged by outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), has happened in the past, with former President Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon following his resignation over the Watergate scandal — a decision that, far from healing the country, proved wildly unpopular and contributed to Ford's undoing in the subsequent election of 1976.

Biden, for his part, already committed against pardoning Trump when they ran against each other in 2020. But Thiessen and Pletka insist he should reconsider, and that this time it would make the country better off.

They concluded by quoting Biden's 2020 victory speech, where he said “To everything there is a season — a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.” Should Biden do what they are advocating, they wrote, "history can still record that, in the waning days of his presidency, Joe Biden finally delivered on that promise."

Donald Trump is the first Republican to secure a popular vote victory in the presidential contest since 2004. As such, he feels more confident than he did last time, and has stated that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate” to issue a wave of new policies through executive power once he takes office.

But he could be heading for a rude awakening, wrote Hayes Brown for MSNBC.

The fact is, he wrote, Trump's popular vote win is one of the smallest in the history of modern elections — and while he enjoys a modicum of goodwill from voters now, that will quickly dissipate if he overreaches.

And as more votes have been counted, he wrote, Trump's victory — now at 1.6 percent, versus President Joe Biden's 4.5 percent win four years ago — looks less and less impressive: he "has not won a majority of the country’s votes, according to the most recent tally from NBC News. And much of the data available shows that Trump’s win likely had more to do with people opting to stay home this year than a massive swing in his favor."

This should worry Trump, wrote Brown, because even presidents who entered office with far greater mandates have lost popularity rapidly when voters turned on their agenda: the U.S. electorate "will support the presidential candidate deemed most likely to represent change, only to move quickly to punish them for any sign of hubris," he wrote.

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"Every new administration since Clinton has seen its party hold a trifecta in Washington during its first year in office and claim a mandate to shake things up. It has not fared well in most instances."

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, for example, suffered wipeouts after controversial healthcare reform agendas, while George W. Bush's second term was crippled early on by a groundswell of outrage over his effort to privatize Social Security.

And there are signs Trump is setting himself up for something similar. Pew Research "hasn’t found a massive surge in support for his policies," wrote Brown, with only a bare 53 percent of voters open to his agenda, and even many of them turning against it when asked specific questions like on his immigration ideas.

Ultimately, wrote Brown, "The will of Donald Trump should never be confused for the will of all Americans."