Item one: Trump has appointed an acting director of national intelligence. Bill Pulte has been as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and the chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since 2025. I understand he is still going to hold those positions while serving as director of national intelligence. Sure he will. Pulte has absolutely no background in intelligence, national or otherwise. His background appears to be in home construction and private equity.
Obviously Pulte was put in the DNI position because Trump trusts him to be loyal. David Frum at The Atlantic:
In every other respect, the appointment is baffling. Pulte has no intelligence background; no national-security expertise. He’s an ultra-partisan with a highly quarrelsome personality and great inherited wealth. Beyond that, there’s not much to say about his record of public or personal achievement.
Yet Pulte does have a disgraceful record of putting the prosecutorial powers of government at President Trump’s vindictive service. In his role as director of the Federal Housing Financing Agency, Pulte referred Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James for criminal prosecution for mistakes on mortgage documents so commonplace that they were also committed by Trump Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.
Bessent and Pulte are said to not get along well, BTW. There’s a story that Bessent threatened to punch Pulte out at some fancy dinner.
I’m hearing the bobbleheads on television say that Pulte will be in a position to do a lot of mischief in upcoming elections. He and Kash Patel can fabricate all kinds of accusations that will allow them to interfere with honest voting. “In Bill Pulte, [Trump] has the perfect tool for any improper goal,” writes David Frum.
Watch this space.
Item two: You may have heard the slush fund is dead. Guess again. See David Kurtz, TPM, Fool Me a Thousand Times … All that reporting that Trump had to have decided to stop the slush fund and the stipulations attached to it appears to have been a feint. It’s not dead yet.
A confusing mishmash of reporting Monday afternoon inadvertently revealed that Donald Trump can still play Congress and the press like fools.
The flurry of reporting, mostly from Capitol Hill, was about whether the political heat around the corrupt “Anti-Weaponization Fund” had become too much to stomach, especially for GOP senators. The vague news, largely attributed to unnamed White House sources, was that Trump was signaling he “plans to drop,” “pause,” “retreat,” “backtrack,” and “back off” from the slush fund.
Adding an absurdist twist to the afternoon, the Trump DOJ put out a meaningless statement that it would abide by a court order blocking the slush fund.
Note that all the uproar yesterday only dealt with the slush fund — and only with the political furor over the slush fund. That represents only part of the corrupt scheme to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, which has three main elements:
The three elements are the taxpayers’ money claimed by Trump for his own purposes; the stipulation that Trump and his offspring be spared audits by the IRS; and the appearance that this whole thing is an attempt to defraud the courts. And the feint is intended to stop Republicans in Congress from doing anything about it. Trump intends to go through with this when the coast is clear. There are other obstacles, of course, and Kurtz provides more details. Note that Bloomberg is running a headline that says Trump to Get Audit Immunity as $1.8 Billion Fund in Doubt, but the story is behind a paywall.
Item Three: Today there are primaries in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota and New Mexico. Fingers crossed that a Democrat moves on to the California general.
Positive Machinations: The New Mexico Truth Commission on Zorro Ranch issued 14 subpoenas, mostly to state institutions, probably for records. I heard someone say, who worked at Los Alamos a few decades ago, that the locals called Epstein's ranch "Victoria's Secret", no doubt because of all the beautiful young women. He said it was well known.
Culture wars have broken out in Texas I read. It is Texas you know. If they had any culture, they would know not to war period, and certainly not about culture. They won't ever have any culture at all if they think that is the way to get some.
Talarico gives us hope. Save us from those who think you will only have peace if you fight for it.
When they get the cage built at the white house will Bessent and Pulte be on the fight card? In the biggest loser bracket?
The Los Angeles Times has solved the puzzle of what to call our new conflict. They came up with Schrödinger's war of the Schrodinger's cat in the box case where the cat is both dead and alive. Here, of course we have a creature of politics that is a war and not a war at the same time. Problem solved. Schrodinger's war.
Trump to Get Audit Immunity
Who does Trump think he is, the Pentagon?
Of course this is the equivalent of leaping up and down, waving a flag and beating on a metl garbage bin while loudly proclaiming "I AM A TAX CHEAT".
I imagine most people in the world knew that but it is is rather poor taste to flaunt it. Still it legitimizes the rest of US tax payers to cheat. "If the President can do it, it is okay for me to do it."