President Donald Trump's controversial Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte got a polite smackdown from a reporter for complaining that they didn't print his entire politically and racially charged rant about Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
The controversy stemmed from Punchbowl News printing a quote from Pulte firing back at Warren, who has stepped up her accusations in recent months that the Trump appointee is abusing his power to help the president target political foes. His particular complaint was that they only excerpted the part where he said Warren is "faking an understanding of mortgage finance" and left out his additional personal attacks on her.
"It’s really sad to see the state of 'journalism,'" wrote Pulte on X. "They include quotes from Democrats attacking me but leave out my quote where I said this about Elizabeth Warren, 'Elizabeth Warren is faking an understanding of mortgage finance just like she faked her Native American heritage'" — a reference to a more than decade-old controversy in which Warren was listed as having Native American ancestry in a school directory.
The writer of the Punchbowl story, Brendan Pedersen, responded on Monday, reminding him that he doesn't get to dictate exactly how his rhetoric is used in political reporting.
"We included the part of the quote that met our editorial standards for relevancy, not the racial commentary. Thank you for your readership, Mr. Pulte," wrote Pedersen.
Pulte has drawn scrutiny in recent months for digging into the mortgage records of various Democratic politicians and critics of the Trump administration, from Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) to Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, and filing allegations of mortgage fraud based on what appear to mostly be small, common clerical errors of the sort he himself has made in the past.
Some of these accusations have led to Trump's prosecutors filing charges, including against New York Attorney General Letitia James, although legal experts expect these cases are on course to fall apart.