(WWJ) President Donald Trump has tapped federal housing finance Director Bill Pulte to be Acting Director of National Intelligence, to replace Tulsi Gabbard.
Trump made the surprise announcement on Tuesday on Truth Social regarding Pulte, who is currently the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as well as chairman of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Pulte also has connections to Michigan.
His grandfather founded PulteGroup in Detroit in the 1950s. He later founded the Blight Authority, a nonprofit organization dedicated to removing urban blight in Detroit and Pontiac.
Trump said Pulte will keep his other positions even as he fills in for Gabbard.
Gabbard last month, , revealing her husband’s cancer diagnosis, announced she would resign from the role, effective June 30.
The Associated Press reports Pulte, in his FHFA role, has mainly trained his sights on Trump’s domestic rivals, going after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for having not cutting the central bank’s benchmark interest rates as aggressively as the president wanted. The AP also noted Pulte has been a frequent guest on Air Force One, traveling with Trump to his Florida home at Mar-a-Lago.
Pulte — who has no prior experience in an intelligence role — may be best-known by some as a pioneer of "Twitter Philanthropy," where he gained fame by giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars to followers on the social media platform now known as X.
