President Donald Trump is overcompensating for something and turning the White House into a McMansion with his controversial renovations, veteran TV reporter Don Lemon told The Daily Beast Podcast.
Discussing the demolition of the entire East Wing of the White House—the full extent of which was discovered this week once bulldozers arrived—and the president’s plans for a $300 million ballroom, Lemon argued that these changes aren’t Trump’s to make.
“Maybe we do need a new ballroom, but it’s not for him to decide. It’s for the American people to decide,” Lemon told The Daily Beast Podcast host Joanna Coles. “It’s for the congress who holds the purse strings to decide. It’s for the historic commission to decide.”
“The White House is a federal building. It’s not Donald Trump’s house,” Lemon continued. “If you want to do something to a federal building, you have to get approval for it and it has to go through the process.”
“He hasn’t done any of that. He’s just torn down and bulldozed the White House,” he added. The construction of federal buildings in Washington D.C. is typically overseen by the National Capital Planning Commission. It is currently closed due to the government shutdown, but plans for Trump’s renovations were not submitted to the commission prior to the demolition.
Discussing the makeshift tents for large events used by previous administrations, which the Trump administration has cited as proof a larger event space was needed, Lemon said, “The tents don’t bother me. I don’t think everything has to be a McMansion. He’s turning the white House into a McMansion.”
Lemon then went on to argue that Trump’s renovations are a sign he’s “overcompensating” for having “a small one.”
“It’s like the guy who drives the giant pickup truck or the muscle car. What are you overcompensating for?” Lemon asked. The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
The former CNN host also defended his right to be a “design snob” about Trump’s aesthetic choices regarding the ballroom, which is set to be larger than the White House itself and feature neoclassical architectural elements and numerous gold accents.
“I think it’s okay to be a design snob. This house represents America more than any other structure in the world, even the Capitol. So it should be in good taste, you know?” Lemon argued.
He continued, “I mean, think about Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle. Would you want that to be in bad taste? This is our version of that, so we should get approval. It should have historic approval, it should have architects, and people who design, and decorators [who] should be a part of this. And it should be in scale to the White House.”
“He’s basically putting the Superdome next to a college football stadium,” Lemon said.
Trump’s ballroom is now expected to be nearly 125,000 square feet, dwarfing the White House itself, which is 55,000 square feet without the West or now-demolished East Wings.
Lemon suggested that Trump could have built his ballroom elsewhere in D.C. in order to preserve the White House as it is.
“If you want to have a ballroom,” Lemon argued, “you can build it at some other place and say, ‘This is the ballroom where we’re going to entertain foreign dignitaries.’ They don’t have to go to the White House. Why is it necessary for them to go there?”
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