The head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency took to CNBC on Thursday morning to defend Donald Trump ’s firing of Dr. Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. During a contentious interview, Bill Pulte —the Trump appointee who publicly accused Cook last month of committing mortgage fraud, and has claimed to have invented “Twitter philanthropy”— insisted Cook’s firing was not politically motivated, refused to divulge his “sources and methods,” and told cohost Andrew Ross Sorkin, “I don’t need you to help me explain things, Andrew.”

But let’s explain how we got here. Throughout his first term and for most of his second, Trump has been extremely angry with the Federal Reserve, whose policymakers he apparently thinks know less about being good stewards of t

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