Trump’s New DNI is a Nepo Baby Who Got His Job Because of MAGA Affirmative Action

What do Tulsi Gabbard and Bill Pulte have in common? They’re both horrible.

Credit: Public Domain

This week Donald Trump appointed Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence. Who is this person and what qualifications does he have to become America’s spy chief?

Pulte, 38, currently heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency and serves as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He is expected to keep these titles while serving as DNI, much in the same (unusual) way that Marco Rubio has become Secretary of State and acting National Security Advisor at the same time.

More importantly, Pulte has no national security background and no apparent qualifications for the immensely consequential job of DNI. What he does have is a fearsome loyalty to the president, and a demonstrated track record of politicizing the levers of federal power to advance Trump’s agenda—and silence the president’s critics.

Pulte comes from a wealthy real estate family. In 1956 his grandfather founded the company that would become the homebuilding giant PulteGroup. The younger Pulte’s current net worth is estimated to be $105 million, per Yahoo Finance. It’s predictable, at this point, that Trump would tap an industry scion with no record of public service to run one of the nation’s key federal housing regulators.

The star turn for Pulte came after Trump re-entered office with a self-proclaimed mandate for “retribution.” As the head of FHFA, Pulte set about investigating Trump’s opponents who spoke out against him. To do so, he alleged mortgage “fraud” charges, for which Fannie Mae’s own internal investigators have said there is no clear evidence. Among his targets are New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

The blowback was swift. The Government Accountability Office launched an investigation into whether Pulte and other FHFA employees misused federal authority and resources in making the criminal referrals. Democrats in Congress also launched an investigation in response to Pulte’s weaponization of his agency against the president’s political opponents.

Pulte didn’t make it to the top of the housing sector because of anything he did; he was born into it. He didn’t win Trump’s admiration in his FHFA role because he was competent. And he wasn’t tapped as DNI for his qualifications, or because he knows anything about intelligence-gathering. He got this far because of an unflinching loyalty to the boss.

Let’s call Pulte’s appointment what it is: affirmative action. Trump and his enablers like to rail against DEI, wokeness, and affirmative action—a lot. They say “we’ve ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies,” and “our country will be woke no longer.” They pretend the Trump project is all about restoring meritocracy to America. This, they say, is the only way to return our nation to its once and future greatness.

Pulte’s appointment highlights this administration’s blatant hypocrisy once again. Trump’s Cabinet is stocked with unqualified hacks who made their name sucking up to the boss on TV: Pete Hegseth, Sean Duffy, Kash Patel, the list goes on. Pulte’s appointment is just another log on the fire.

This is a danger to democracy and a detriment to the safety and security of the American people. These are immensely consequential jobs that demand serious people who have been rigorously vetted, and possess the necessary qualifications. Pulte does not. And yet, he now is set to occupy a post that was created in response to 9/11, to ensure the intelligence failures that took place in the lead-up to that attack don’t happen again.

Trump’s last DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, was a pro-Russian stooge (per her own former staffers) whose biggest accomplishment in office was launching a raid against Georgia’s election infrastructure, while being shut out of most consequential intelligence matters. Pulte will probably be as much of an affront to the office of DNI as his predecessor. But if history is a guide, incompetence won’t stop him from failing up.

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