NCUA chairman praises Trump in new White House video

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Congress recently began conducting impeachment inquires into President Donald Trump, but the beleaguered commander in chief has a fan in National Credit Union Administration Chairman Rodney Hood, who praised the president in a new video published by the White House Friday.

"This president has done more for African-Americans than any other president in my lifetime,” Hood said in the video.

Rodney Hood, Chairman of @TheNCUA Board: "This President has done more for African-Americans than any other President in my lifetime." pic.twitter.com/tSlia93azj

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) October 4, 2019

Hood attributed this to unemployment being at an all-time low of under 6%, in addition to African-American families seeing an increase in their net worth. But median wealth of black Americans is expected to fall to zero by 2053 if current trends continue, according to the "Road to Zero Wealth" report published by Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies.

As with nearly everything related to Trump, reactions to the video have been split and strong on both sides of the aisle. Many users took to Twitter to express their distaste with the clip, though many of the president’s supporters praised the video as well. At the time this report was published, the 37-second clip has amassed roughly 9,000 likes on Twitter and about 3,7000 likes on Facebook since it was posted.

The search term "NCUA" peaked Friday at 12:32 p.m. EST, according to Google Trends data, which was roughly 20 minutes after the publication of the video to Twitter.

Trump nominated Hood, a Republican, late last year to fill the seat vacated by former NCUA Board Member Rick Metsger and appointed him chairman after Hood's Senate confirmation this spring. While it's not uncommon to hear Republicans praise the president, it is unusual to see a seated member of the NCUA board doing so, particularly on such a high-profile platform as social media. The industry likes to tout itself as being nonpartisan and as being able to work with both major political parties.

Earlier this year Vice President Mike Pence addressed the Credit Union National Association's governmental affairs conference in Washington, the first sitting member of the executive branch to speak at the conference since the Truman administration. But Pence garnered mixed reactions by shifting his remarks away from credit union topics and urging conference attendees to push their elected representatives to support Trump's controversial immigration policies.

It is unclear when the Hood video was filmed, but its release appears to coincide with new data from the September jobs report published Friday.

Neither the NCUA nor credit union trade groups responded to requests for comment.