Remove Bill Pulte

National Review Online

Friday, June 05, 2026

 

Arguably, Bill Pulte isn’t well-suited to being director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, but at least he has ample experience in real estate.

 

Now, he’s become President Trump’s most egregious personnel decision since he briefly wanted to make Matt Gaetz attorney general of the United States.

 

In the wake of Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation last month, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he has appointed Pulte as acting director of national intelligence, a preposterous choice.

 

Pulte was qualified for his role at the housing agency, with decades of family experience in residential homebuilding and private equity. But he has become better-known in Washington as one of Trump’s most voluble internal partisan enforcers, using the access to private data his position gives him to dig up as much weaponizable information as possible about Trump’s political enemies: New York Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

 

Suddenly, all of them were guilty of “mortgage fraud.” Meanwhile — in terms of his actual policy role in the position as the self-appointed head of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — Pulte spearheaded the idea of a “50-year mortgage” for new homebuyers, a terrible idea that duly sank without a trace.

 

Now, without any prior experience or demonstrated interest whatsoever in the national security or intelligence sectors, he’s the head of DNI. It is difficult to avoid the obvious supposition that Trump selected him not for his expertise or any suitability for the role beyond his demonstrated enthusiasm for seeking any angle, legal or otherwise, to submarine the president’s enemies.

 

Now is not the time for a discussion about the superfluousness of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which should not exist. (It was created in 2004 after a panicked post-9/11 “do something” reorganization of the American national security sector, and inserts a needless layer of bureaucracy on top of an already inefficient and slow-moving intel community, rather than streamlining it.) But so long as it exists, the ODNI should adhere to the spirit of the statutory language that created it, and that language speaks with clarity on who should be appointed to oversee it: “Any individual nominated for appointment as Director of National Intelligence shall have extensive national security expertise.” (This should go without saying, but the law actually says it.)

 

Obviously, a top national security position shouldn’t be treated like a political prize to be awarded to faithful myrmidons, or to be handed to mindless partisans. Even Roscoe Conkling might blush at the temerity of it. With Republicans lukewarm and Democrats threatening to derail a FISA deal over the selection, Pulte is clearly unconfirmable. Trump is now emphasizing that Pulte’s appointment is only temporary while he finds someone else to take the role permanently.

 

The more temporary, the better — this appointment never should have happened and should be revoked immediately.