Donald Trump’s decision to appoint Bill Pulte, a businessman currently serving as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHA), to replace departing DNI director Tulsi Gabbard set off a wave of surprise and consternation on MS NOW Tuesday morning.
On Truth Social , Trump made the announcement that Pulte would serve as acting director despite having zero experience in intelligence gathering and analysis, having spent his life working in his family's home construction business.
MS NOW’s Jonathan Lemire read the breaking news, which led his colleague Eugene Daniels to point out that Pulte's only seeming ally in the White House is the president himself.
Pulte has been involved in making wild accusations of mortgage fraud aimed at some of Donald Trump enemies that have gone nowhere when the Department of Justice later investigated.
According to Daniels, because of that, the appointment may not sit well within the White House.
“This would seem to be a an escalation in Trump's efforts to relitigate 2020,” Lemire suggested. “Those investigations, which Gabbard was already doing, but also potentially trying to build more acts of retribution against folks.”
"It's all loyalty, right?” Daniels replied. “Because Bill Pulte, who is a businessman, does not have experience in foreign policy in the way that you would probably want the DNI to actually have. Their job is to be the go-between all of the intel agencies and typically give the presentation to the president about what the intel agencies are saying or doing. He is also someone who folks in the white house have been a little bit frustrated with, not Donald Trump, obviously.”
“Remember that Jesus meme?, He is the one that Donald Trump talked with before he posted it,” Daniels recalled. “And so that caused a whole kerfuffle for folks when that was reported out at the time. I will say this is, once again, just Donald Trump finding folks who have no experience. It doesn't matter to him, trying to figure out how do I get the things that I want?”
Lemire closed with, "Tulsi Gabbard sort of sidelined herself because she disagreed with trump in the Iran war. So she was left out of a lot of key decisions. That's still a really important job and Pulte comes in here with zero experience in the intelligence community is a remarkable moment."
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