‘Don’t think he has a prayer’

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis on Wednesday blasted President Donald Trump‘s pick to lead the U.S. intelligence community as an “incendiary attack dog” who has no path to being confirmed by the Senate.

The remarks on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” from the retiring North Carolina senator added to the growing backlash against Bill Pulte, the current head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, whom Trump appointed acting director of national intelligence on Tuesday.

“I don’t think he has a prayer” of making it through the Senate and becoming the permanent DNI, Tillis said of Pulte.

“Whoever told the president to go ahead and commit to this publicly before vetting it should lose their jobs, because they should know that the math just works against Pulte being confirmed,” he said.

But the senator also acknowledged that the Trump administration could try to skirt the issue by simply leaving Pulte in place with the “acting” title instead of trying to push for full confirmation.

Pulte, who has no known prior experience in an intelligence role, is widely viewed as a Trump loyalist who has targeted the president’s political foes during his tenure leading the housing regulatory agency.

Those targets include Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who both faced allegations of mortgage-related wrongdoing by Pulte.

Trump said that Pulte will serve as acting DNI while continuing to work as FHFA director and chairman of the mortgage groups Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Pulte is replacing outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who said last month that she would resign June 30.

Tillis said on CNBC that Pulte “got removed from his family board the moment the family no longer owned 51%,” and later made such critical statements “that his father and aunt disavowed him having any association with their family trust.”

Tillis was referring to reports that Pulte, a scion of the founder of homebuilding giant PulteGroup, was pushed off the company’s board in 2020 amid disagreements with other directors. The senator also appeared to reference a statement from the Pulte Family Charitable Foundation, clarifying that Bill Pulte, who maintains a highly active social media presence, does not speak for his family “in any capacity.”

“Why do I bring that up? I bring it up because it suggests a temperament that’s probably not right for the DNI role,” Tillis said.

“I don’t believe he’s ever had a security clearance. He clearly has no experience in intelligence, he has no geopolitical experience, no international connections — the sorts of things you would look for” in a DNI, said Tillis.

“He’s got a structural problem. He simply doesn’t have 51 votes on the Senate floor, and he may not even have the votes in [the Senate intelligence] committee, and we…