At a meeting with House Republicans this month, President Trump waved a draft of a letter firing the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell.
The letter, which rattled Washington and global markets, was not written by Mr. Trump or his core economic advisers. Instead, it was drafted by Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who has used his perch and his social media prowess to become the Trump administration’s loudest critic of Mr. Powell.
The campaign against Mr. Powell has given Mr. Pulte, an heir of one of America’s largest home building families, a new prominence within the Trump administration that exceeds the usually quiet confines of the agency. A longtime social media maven, Mr. Pulte has deployed his bombastic tone and his credibility from the construction industry to argue that the Fed’s policies are hurting the housing market and that a $2.5 billion renovation of its headquarters is an example of reckless spending by the central bank.
“I believe Jerome Powell is conducting economic warfare against America,” Mr. Pulte wrote on the platform X this month.
For weeks, Mr. Pulte, who has three million followers, has called for Mr. Powell to either resign or be investigated over a renovation to the Federal Reserve building in Washington that he has said is “riddled with fraud.”
The approach has also been an opportunity for Mr. Pulte to ingratiate himself with the president, a developer. Within hours of Mr. Trump’s making a comment about his frustration with Mr. Powell’s policy on interest rates, Mr. Pulte usually takes to X with a post demanding Mr. Powell’s resignation.
