POLITICO: WH officials upset with Pulte who talked Trump into suggesting 50-year mortgage

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White House officials are furious with Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, who talked the president into suggesting a 50-year mortgage plan.

The White House was blindsided by the idea, according to two people familiar with the situation granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, and is now dealing with a furious backlash from conservative allies, business leaders and lawmakers.

On Saturday evening, Pulte arrived at President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach Golf Club with a roughly 3-by-5 posterboard in hand. A graphic of former President Franklin Roosevelt appeared below “30-year mortgage” and one of Trump below “50-year mortgage.” The headline was “Great American Presidents.”

Roughly 10 minutes later, Trump posted the image to Truth Social, according to one of the people familiar, who was with the president at the time.

Almost immediately, aides were fielding angry phone calls from those who thought the idea – which would endorse a 50 year payback period for a mortgage – was both bad politics and bad policy, a move that could raise housing costs in the long run, the person said.

“He just sold POTUS a bill of goods that wasn’t necessarily accurate,” the person said. “He said ‘FDR did it, you can do it, it’s gonna be a big thing.’ But he didn’t tell him about all the unintended consequences.”

The episode underscores the haphazard ways consequential policies are sometimes brought before the president, and how Trump’s govern-by-whim nature can backfire.

“Anything that goes before POTUS needs to be vetted,” said the person present for Pulte’s poster presentation. “And a lot of times with Pulte they’re not. He just goes straight up to POTUS.”

One of the two people familiar said there is more fallout from this idea than almost any other policy proposal of the second term, including from the MAGA base.

Trump on Monday downplayed the proposal and said it was not “a big deal.”

“All it means is you pay less per month,” Trump said on a Fox News show hosted by Lara Ingraham. “Pay it over a longer period of time. It’s not like a big factor. It might help a little bit.”

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