Trump backs down on Bill Pulte after bipartisan Senate revolt

President Donald Trump said Thursday that federal housing finance regulator Bill Pulte, his pick for acting director of national intelligence, would not be his “permanent” choice for the critical security post. The Republican president’s disclosure that he was ruling out installing Pulte in the position full-time came after bipartisan pushback on Capitol Hill in recent days over Pulte’s lack of national security experience. The position requires Senate confirmation, something that lawmakers indicated was unlikely if Pulte were the nominee. “He’s not going to be permanent because, you know, I don’t think he’d want to be permanent,” Trump said while taking questions in the Oval Office after an event on coal. He called Pulte a “very smart guy” and said he may look at past elections that Trump claims, without credible evidence, were “rigged” against him. Trump said other candidates were under consideration for nomination to the post. “We’re interviewing people right now,” he said. Pulte, a grandson of the founder of PulteGroup, has been a source of controversy within the administration for his work as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and his oversight of the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Pulte has used his position to pursue Trump’s perceived political rivals for alleged mortgage fraud and has verbally attacked Jerome Powell, whose term as the Federal Reserve chairman recently ended after months of Trump and Pulte attacking him for not slashing the central bank’s benchmark rates. The federal housing finance regulator has also pitched a 50-year mortgage, an idea that backfired as it meant that the process of building wealth through home ownership would be slowed. Both Republican and Democratic senators expressed concerns about Pulte and his lack of national security credentials in occupying a role coordinating 18 federal agencies involved in domestic and foreign security issues. Trump’s initial director of national intelli