President Trump in an interview broadcast late Monday dismissed concerns from his base over his administration’s planned 50-year mortgage proposal.
“It’s not even a big deal,” Trump told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on “The Ingraham Angle.”
“I mean, you go from 40 to 50 years and what it means is you pay something less. From 30, some people had a 40 and now they have a 50,” he added.
“All it means is you pay less per month. You pay it over a longer period of time. It’s not like a big factor. It might help a little bit,”
Trump first proposed the idea on Saturday in a post on Truth Social, featuring an image of him side-by-side with former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D).
The graphic was titled “Great American Presidents,” and above Roosevelt’s photo, “30-Year Mortgage” was written, while “50-Year Mortgage” was displayed above Trump’s image.
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte responded to Trump’s post in a statement on the social platform X, saying, “Thanks to President Trump, we are indeed working on The 50 year Mortgage – a complete game changer.”
However, what is known about Trump’s plan has received blowback from his conservative MAGA base.
Fox Business anchor Charles Payne said on Monday that he did not like the idea.
“It depends on how much the house costs,” Payne said on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom,” “but if you just took a 4 percent interest rate for a 30-year, it would be $2,300; for a 50-year, it would be $1,900, so you’re saving almost 500 bucks a month in terms of affordability.”
“But, by the time you finish paying this bad boy off, the 30-year, you pay $359,000 versus a 50-year, almost $700,000, right? So, it’s just a gargantuan difference just to make people feel better,” he said.
“That’s not the way to do this, right? There are so many other ways.”
The proposal comes as both parties seek to sharpen their focus on affordability following Democrats’ sweeping off-year election wins on the issue last week.
In his interview with Ingraham, Trump laid blame on former President Biden and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for affordability issues in the housing sector.
“The problem was that Biden did this. He increased the interest rates. And I have a lousy Fed person who’s going to be gone in a few months, fortunately,” the president said.
