What Trump's Tacky WH McMansion Plans Reveal: Lemon

The Daily Beast Podcast

The Daily Beast

News & Politics

4.6 • 7.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Don Lemon joins Joanna Coles to assess how Donald Trump’s hasty East Wing tear-down, building a tacky McMansion-style ballroom while the country stalls, mixing supposed opulence with power, and blurring public duty with private ego. Lemon, a veteran reporter and anchor, brings his sharp and uncompromising voice to the conversation. Together with Coles, he examines Trump’s architecture of excess —the corporations and their leaders acting as his handmaidens —and asks: when the symbol of American democracy becomes a personal trophy house, what does that mean for the rest of us, and how long can the facade hold?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	But actually, he's right that we need a new ballroom.
0:02.7	Maybe we do need a new ballroom.
0:04.5	But it's not for him to decide. It's for the American people to decide. It's for the Congress who holds the purse strings to decide. Right. And it's for the historic commission to decide. The White House is a federal building. It's not Donald Trump's house. So if you want to do something to a federal building, you have to get approval for it. and has to go through the process.
0:21.9	He hasn't done any of that.
0:23.0	He's just torn down and bulldoze the White House. I don't think everything has to be a McMansion. He's turning the White House into a McMansion. He's turning the White House into a McMansion. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. Today I'm going to be discussing, well, kind of everything with Don Lemon.
0:41.1	What isn't there to discuss? The entire demolition of the east wing of the White House in record time with no congressional approval.
0:53.8	It's just an astonishing development. Then there are the little boats
0:57.5	bobbing around initially the Caribbean and now the Pacific that are being shot on the suspicion
1:02.7	that they might be carrying drugs. There is the government shutdown. There are TSA workers not being
1:07.8	paid. Let's waste no time. There is so much going on. Who better to discuss
1:13.1	it with than Don Lemon of Don Lemon Live. Don, let's get into it. Don Lemon, we are surrounded by
1:21.9	snacks. I know. Because we're just comfort eating our way through this, right? Because, yes. And because,
1:29.9	honestly, I rarely leave a camera and computer.
1:30.7	I know.
1:33.4	I can't believe we enticed you out.
1:41.2	We coaxed you out like pucks a tawny feel from your cave, or actually your beautiful drawing room where you do your podcast from.
1:43.6	But we're very glad to have you here. And you're either in your recording studio.
1:46.8	Yeah, I'm going to have one of those too.
1:48.6	Or, no, or your man on the street with your huge microphone.
1:53.2	It's not that huge.
1:54.8	It's huge.
1:55.8	It's huge.
	...

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