SILVER ALERT

Aide, 37, Fooled Trump, 79, Into Harebrained Mortgage Scheme in Just Minutes

He slipped past handlers to sweet-talk the president just before lunchtime.

President Donald Trump was reportedly persuaded to back a 50-year mortgage plan during a brief meeting at his golf club.

The president, 79, has faced widespread backlash since he posted about the extended mortgage on Saturday.

But according to Politico, the White House had been blindsided by the idea, which had come from Bill Pulte, 37, Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Agency director.

Pulte showed up at Trump’s Palm Beach Golf Club with a three-by-five poster board with a graphic of former President Franklin Roosevelt with a “30-year-mortgage” and Trump with the “50-year-mortgage,” according to the report.

Just ten minutes later, Trump posted the image on Truth Social, a person who was with the president at the time told Politico.

The post featured the two presidents and their corresponding mortgages under the headline “Great American Presidents.”

Pulte also shared the image on X with the post that they were, in fact, working on a 50-year mortgage. He called it a “complete game changer.”

The response to the proposal from housing and financial experts was fast and furious.

Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, a sometime Trump ally, said he did not like the idea and that with the amount of interest being paid, a person would never own the home.

Investor James Fishback, who proposed DOGE dividends earlier this year, slammed the 50-year-mortgage idea as a “spit in the face” and “an insult” in a video.

“We did not vote for this. We did not vote to become debt slaves to private equity firms and the big banks and Wall Street,” he raged.

SHORTSIGHTED

Fox Business Host Slams Trump’s 50-Year Mortgage Plan

Vic Verbalaitis

MAGA favorite Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote in a post that it would ultimately reward the banks, lenders and home builders while people pay more interest over time, “and die before they ever pay off their home.”

Pulte appeared to respond to the criticism with another post on Monday in which he wrote that a 50-year mortgage is “simply a potential weapon in a WIDE arsenal of solutions that we are developing right now” and to “stay tuned.”

After the president’s post, aides were almost immediately fielding angry calls, according to Politico.

One person said Pulte sold POTUS “a bill of goods that wasn’t necessarily accurate” and he “didn’t tell him about all the unintended consequences.”

“Anything that goes before POTUS needs to be vetted,” the person there for Pulte’s poster presentation told Politico.

One of the people said of Pulte: “After publicly humiliating the president with his moronic 50-year mortgage plan, it’s safe to assume that his days are numbered.”

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The Daily Beast asked the White House if the president still plans to move forward with the proposal, but the president appeared to double down and dismiss criticism in an interview with Fox News on Monday.

“Is [the 50-year-mortgage] really a good idea?” asked host Laura Ingraham.

“It’s not even a big deal. I mean, you know, you go from 40 to 50 years,“ Trump said.

Ingraham jumped in to correct him, saying it was 30 to 50 years, but Trump insisted they would be paying less per month.

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Sarah Ewall-WicePolitical Reporter

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