Dem
47
GOP
53
Bill Pulte is the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). What Pulte is supposed to do, in that position, is oversee the various federally backed lenders who provide home loans. What he primarily does, however, is try to find information that can be weaponized against Donald Trump's perceived enemies. It is Pulte who was behind the "criminal" cases against New York AG Letitia James, Fed Governor Lisa Cook, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and others.
Given the excellent work that Pulte has done, it means he's earned the opportunity to expand his portfolio. And so, as of yesterday, he is the acting Director of National Intelligence, succeeding the recently departed Tulsi Gabbard. Pulte is keeping his FHFA job, so we guess he'll spend half his time overseeing home loans and the other half overseeing the United States' 18 intelligence agencies.
There is no indication that Pulte has any qualifications whatsover to be DNI, at least in terms of what the DNI is supposed to do. However, Pulte is eminently qualified to do what Trump wants, which is to provide information that supports the administration's narratives on Iran, Venezuela and, likely in the near future, Cuba. This will undoubtedly please Trump, and help him to indulge his fantasies about how he's beating all of America's adversaries into the ground with his enormous penis. It will make actual success in those conflicts considerably harder, however.
Pulte was tapped because, in addition to being a fawning lackey, he is already Senate-approved for a senior position. So, by law, he's allowed to take over a different senior position on an acting basis. In theory, that is only supposed to be OK for 180 days, but Trump has a habit of ignoring such deadlines, and congressional Republicans have a habit of letting him do it. So, it's anyone's guess how long Pulte will actually remain in his new job, and how long he'll keep both jobs. The good news, we suppose, is that it sure looks like Trump is running out of lackeys to appoint. If he wasn't, he wouldn't need to give every lackey he does have working for him two or three different jobs. (Z)