US President Donald Trump has picked a man who first rose to national prominence by giving away free money to strangers on social media for his new director of national intelligence.
Bill Pulte currently heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In that role, he also oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two federally controlled mortgage guarantors facilitate the securitization of the majority of American home mortgages through the bundling and selling of loans.
Now, Pulte has been named acting head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is supposed to be the chief office of the whole US intelligence community. He will wear both housing and intelligence hats at least until the White House formally nominates him and the US Senate acts on the nomination.
That could take some time. Many senators, including members of Pulte’s own Republican Party, have sounded skeptical notes.
Family Business and Twitter Philanthropy
He was a dark horse and an unconventional choice for the foreign policy position. But then little about Pulte’s life has been conventional. He is the grandson of the late billionaire builder William Pulte. The PulteGroup that William founded has overseen the construction of at least 875,000 homes since 1950, according to the company’s official estimate.
William Pulte retired in 2010 and launched a campaign to oust the company’s president over mismanagement in 2016. He succeeded with that ouster, and his grandson was added to the company’s board.
Bill Pulte ran his own companies in the related fields of building investment and countertop manufacturing. His business dealings did not make him as rich as his grandfather, but he did become a multimillionaire. He determined to throw some of that money around on what was then the world’s most reviled social network, Twitter (now X).
Styling himself the “inventor of Twitter philanthropy”, Pulte started giving out some of his own money to people who asked for it starting in 2019. He also launched the Team Giving website and encouraged others to help. As the free money guy, he amassed a following in the millions.
From Political Support to the Federal Government
Pulte’s involvement with Twitter pulled him into the orbit of the man who was the world’s most famous user of that social network at the time. In one 2019 post, Pulte pledged to donate to a veterans cause if President Trump would relay that message to his followers.
Trump obliged him, and the relationship appeared to deepen over the years. Among other things, Pulte became a significant financial backer of Trump leading up to his 2024 political comeback.
One rejected Federal Elections Commission complaint, for instance, unearthed a $500,000 donation from a Pulte-related company to a Trump-related political action committee. PACs can raise and spend a basically unlimited amount of money boosting a candidate so long as they do not coordinate with the campaign.
When Trump returned to the White House, he needed someone to run the housing finance portfolio, and Pulte’s background was a plausible fit. As head of the FHFA and Fannie and Freddie, Pulte appears to have the president’s ear on a number of issues.
President Trump floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage as a more affordable alternative to the current 30-year mortgages, for instance. The idea had been put to him by Pulte.
At Pulte’s suggestion and Trump’s insistence, Fannie and Freddie have added hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgage bonds to their balance sheets. This appears to be having a slight downward pull on home mortgage lending rates.
Pulte’s Critics in the Senate
Many elected Democrats dislike Pulte. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called him a “partisan thug with no experience in intelligence”, on X.
The partisan thug jab was a reference to Pulte’s role in pursuing mortgage fraud allegations, and in some cases formal charges, against several of the Trump administration’s political antagonists. They include New York Attorney General Letitia James, California Senator Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. So far, none of the allegations has resulted in a conviction or removal from office.
Schumer also predicted, “you won’t hear a word from the Republicans who claim to care about national security”. However, some Republican senators have expressed grave skepticism.
Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said that very few Senate-confirmable positions come with statutory eligibility requirements, and that there are “good reasons why the Director of National Intelligence is one of them”. McConnell warned in a statement that “no nominee who falls short of this requirement will earn my vote”.
Lessons from Tulsi Gabbard
The imminent departure of current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to care for her cancer-stricken husband created the vacancy for Pulte to fill. Yet Gabbard had already fallen significantly out of favor in the White House by the time she announced her departure for 30 June.
Her office made the case that Tehran did not have a weaponized nuclear capability and was not particularly close to acquiring one, and she testified as much before Congress. Trump was blunt in his rejection of that assessment. He told a reporter, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one [nuclear weapon]”, in a July 2025 press scrum on Air Force One.
That was after Israeli forces had launched attacks on Iranian military infrastructure. Days later, US forces would strike three nuclear sites with bunker-buster bombs and other munitions.
Gabbard stayed on after that. Yet it is unclear to most observers whether she made any difference once her threat assessment had been swept aside.
Pulte has the president’s ear on many issues. Perhaps he can be heard on foreign policy as well.