This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

It looks like we've crossed over to a new place when it comes to President Trump's corruption. We've seen a confluence of events here. Trump's destruction of a White

House building to create a ballroom for him and his

rich friends? Trump demanding that the Justice Department hand over $230 million to compensate him

for damages? And now, Democrats going after all this in a newly aggressive way. Meanwhile,

White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt issued an

extraordinary new defense of Trump's corruption that only underscores the depths of contempt

that Trump and the White House have for the rule of law. We think it's often forgotten how

important corruption can be to voters, Yet this is mostly absent from the political

discourse right now, and we don't get why. New Republic staff writer Matt Ford has an excellent

new piece that really centers Trump's nakedly corrupt self-dealing as the core story of his presidency.

So we're talking to Matt about all this today. Matt, thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

So let's start with Trump's destruction of the east wing of the White House to build a ballroom.

For people who haven't really paid attention to this, can you just sum up where we are on it and why it's so utterly crazy?

Sure. Earlier this summer, Trump announced that he was going to build a ballroom where most of the East Wing currently is.

The plans were kind of dismissed at the time as a little fanciful, and it was assumed that the project would take some time to complete if it followed the normal channels.

Unfortunately, Trump doesn't follow the normal channels, and so he simply started tearing down the East Wing of the normal channels. Unfortunately, Trump doesn't follow the normal channels.

And so he simply started tearing down the east wing of the White House on Monday. And as of

Wednesday, it is now almost entirely gone. He just started demolishing this building without

any word from Congress, without any process, without anything. Correct. The line from the White House is that the commission that oversees planning in the

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