Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughe.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm okay. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I feel like demolishing something today. What do you do?
N. Rodgers: See, I'm just going to say. When I am president, I am going to have a big fuss pot over this whole ballroom thing. This episode, folks, is the can he do that? We're in our continuing saga story, whatever you want to call it, of Donald Trump's presidency. I said to Aughe, can he just tear down the East Wing? Is that a thing? Aughe said, let me do some research and came back with an answer because I would be willing to bet that if I said, The White House just isn't working for me, so I'm just going to tear it down and build a big condo building, and we'll just move in a bunch of people. I think that somebody somewhere would object, I would think.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Again, with a lot of the stuff that President Trump has done, Nia, where we've asked the question, can he do that? The answer is complicated.
N. Rodgers: He's already doing it. Can is probably the wrong word. It's under what authority?
J. Aughenbaugh: The answer gets complicated, in part because we are talking about the White House.
N. Rodgers: People's house, theoretically, we own it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Historically, that's the way it's been advertised, that's the way it's been talked about in American history in folklore, it is the People's house.
N. Rodgers: President Jackson had a big block of cheese at the White House, and people could come and eat, it's a whole thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: In particular, listeners, what we are referring to is this week, the Trump administration has started the effort to build a 90,000 square foot ballroom for the White House.
N. Rodgers: We're recording this on the 24th. Y'all will hear it on the 27th, and this began on 20th of October. We will be a week into this project when you hear this episode.
J. Aughenbaugh: What is particularly problematic about the building of the ballroom is that initially, when it was announced, when the Trump administration said they wanted this ballroom, they went ahead and said that there would only be some minor alterations to the East Wing of the White House.
N. Rodgers: It was going to be mostly cosmetic, was the way that they made it sound. We're going to have to tear out a few trees, and we may have to do a little bit of stuff to it.
J. Aughenbaugh: For many Americans, the East Wing is primarily the only part of the White House that they've ever visited, because that's where the visitor's entrance is. If you've ever taken a tour of the White House, most of the tour is in the East Wing. It begins there, it ends there. For many Americans, their personal knowledge, if they've ever taken a tour of the White House, is the East Wing, because the West Wing.
N. Rodgers: It's the business wing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's the presidential office complex. That is where the chief of staff has office, etc.
N. Rodgers: That's where the Oval is, it is in the west wing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then, the central part of the White House is the actual residence for the First Family. If you're thinking about it from left to right, the West Wing is the business wing. The central part is the residence, and the East Wing is where many Americans, including, I don't know about you, Nia, but I've taken two tours of the White House. Both times, I entered the White House through the East Wing. Most of the tour was through the East Wing. What started this week, listeners, is the East Wing has been effectively demolished because the conclusion of the architects for the ballroom is that you couldn't go ahead and build a 90,000 square. Again, I keep on repeating this, a 90,000 square feet ballroom without basically destroying the East Wing. We're not talking about cosmetic changes. We're not talking about minor alterations, it's been demolished. A firm was hired that does demolition work. The photos that have been leaked out have basically shown that what used to be the East Wing, which, by the way, also houses the First Lady's office and all of her support staff, all of those offices are gone. It begs the question, on what authority does the president have to fundamentally alter the structure of, as Nia described it, the People's house.
N. Rodgers: By the way, Aughe, in case you were wondering, I have not visited the White House. I have often thought that I should do that at some point, prior to my becoming a resident within it, but also, the whole idea of tearing down the East Wing makes me crabby because the initial promise was that that would not be done, that there would be very little change to the White House itself. Now, the other thing that people may or may not know is the White House itself is 55,000 square feet. You are building an annex to this thing that is space and a half of what the White House is, and you're making it the ballroom. Under what circumstances do we need Versailles? I'm thinking none. There is no circumstance where we needed a ballroom that's 90,000 square feet. That's the size of a Walmart if you want to put up a mental perspective.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, because on this podcast, we try to be balanced or at least try to represent all the various views, I will go ahead and play devil's advocate for just a moment, and this is usually listeners when Nia rolls her eyes at me.
N. Rodgers: Or sticks out my tongue.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sticks out her tongue, yes, or does jazz hands. But nevertheless, and to her credit, so far, she hasn't, but we're early in the episode.
N. Rodgers: There's time, especially if you're about to say something goofy. Go ahead.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, hey, if I'm opening my mouth, there is a really good chance at some point in time, some goofiness will emanate. The argument made by Trump is that, based on his experience in his first term and the fact that a number of recent presidents, when they've had big state dinners, big receptions, have had to frequently erect tents to go ahead and house the overflow of people that we needed a larger common area to host such events.
N. Rodgers: In a temperature-controlled environment, I don't disagree with that.
J. Aughenbaugh: To me, that makes sense because the White House is not only the people's house. It is frequently the main government building that foreign dignitaries, recipients of the various awards, see in our previous podcast episode, gratuitous self-pug, I apologize, that Nia and I did about the various awards that presidents in Congress can give out. These receptions are usually done at the White House. My problem is, I can go that far in saying that we need a larger structure, but where the Trump administration loses me is saying that we need a 90,000 square foot. Basically, addition that will overwhelm the rest of the building.
N. Rodgers: In fairness, let me back up and say I said a moment ago the size of Walmart. It's half the size of a Walmart. Walmart averages 150,000 square feet. It's a little more than half the size of a Walmart, but if you think about, no, you see, Aughe, my first thought was, man, I don't want to be a waiter at one of those events. You've got to walk 87 miles back and forth to the kitchen. I get that we need a big space. I don't know that we need 90,000 square feet of space. My concern here is that this is Donald Trump's ego getting in the way of what we actually need as a country, because he wants the biggest of the biggest of the ballrooms. I'm a little concerned, too, that 90,000 square feet of gilded gold stuff is going to look overwhelming. You know what I mean, it's going to be tacky.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the thing about government buildings, Nia, in the United States, because on one hand, we want the buildings to inspire awe. You've heard me say this off recording. There's no single time I've ever been to the Supreme Court building where I've not just stood on the steps and been in awe of the building. At the same time, the United States is not a monarchy. We don't build castles, we build government buildings that are functional, because the work of government is to get done at the Capitol, at the Supreme Court building, and in the west wing of the White House.
N. Rodgers: Modern buildings are streamlined.
J. Aughenbaugh: I always go back to the word functional, because again, they have multiple purposes. Again, I'm not an architect, I'm not an interior designer. Nobody would ever accuse me of one, but I understand that government buildings serve multiple functions. But these are government buildings that are supposed to go ahead, on one hand, inspire awe. We're supposed to be proud of them, but at the same time, they're supposed to go ahead and function as the locations of where government work gets done. I'm not entirely sure that a 90,000 square foot ballroom serves those purposes, and then that begs the question. If this is just a testimony to the current president's ego, well, that's not who we are historically.
N. Rodgers: The East Wing has been in place since 1942. The East Wing has been in place for 80 years. It's weird to me that we're just going to knock that down. I'm not trying to be ugly, Donald Trump and I have very different aesthetics. He should have been a Robber Baron in the Gilded Age because that is the age in which he mentally lives in terms of his personal aesthetic. If you look at the current Oval, if you look at pictures now in the Oval, there's all this gilt stuff on the wall, and it's all this weird. No, it's not weird, it's all very decorative and very Gilded Age. If you watch this television show, The Gilded Age, you're like, I see where Donald Trump gets aesthetic. That is not my aesthetic. My aesthetic tends to be minimalist, it tends to be cleaner. You can't tell that from my background on Zoom, but generally speaking, I don't own a lot of stuff. We have very different world views of that, but the other thing I think is, at what party are you going to have 90,000 square feet of guests? That is a huge event. Some of the state dinners that have been held at the White House have been intended to be intimate affairs where people actually have time to talk to each other as heads of state. I don't know that in a room that's 90,000 square feet, it will be anything other than performative because there's no way to have an intimate meeting in a setting that large.
N. Rodgers: That may be the part of why I'm [inaudible]
J. Aughenbaugh: Likewise, Nia. For me, government buildings have multiple purposes. Because I have been a bureaucrat most of my life, I understand that we want the building to inspire awe and pride. But at the same time, work has to be done. We need the public to have access. We need government officials to be able to go ahead and do important work there. That's why we use public dollars to pay them.
N. Rodgers: That's a good question. Is this being done by public dollars?
J. Aughenbaugh: This is part of the complexity, Nia. Historically, I'm going to throw kudos to the White House, the Trump administration, presidents altering the White House is not new.
N. Rodgers: Changing the furniture, changing the carpets, buying new China. Didn't Mrs. Nancy Reagan buy whole new China that was different color? I think Jacqueline Onassis did the same. Kennedy, sorry. She was Kennedy at that point. Don't they get a budget for that?
J. Aughenbaugh: They do get a budget. But part of the complexity here is, on one hand, it is the home to the President and the First Family.
N. Rodgers: You want to make it somewhat your own home just because you're going to be living there for four years, at least.
J. Aughenbaugh: As the current president asserts, the President is physically in control of the White House. Then the President should be able to control any renovations to the White House. However, Congress over the years has created a number of advisory boards who are supposed to be consulted before any structural changes are made to the White House.
N. Rodgers: Sorry, I'm going to interrupt you for just a quick second. There is a big difference between cosmetic changes and structural changes. The President doesn't have to ask anybody to make a cosmetic change. Take these drapes down and put up purple with pink dots on them. You tacky lunatic. By the way, that's what I'm going to have when I'm in the White House because I love all things purple. Everything should be purple. I can do that. I can paint the walls.
J. Aughenbaugh: Royal. Imperial. Purple is the color of kings.
N. Rodgers: That's right. When I'm in the White House, one will wonder whether it's going to be a queendom or a presidency. But anyway, I understand making those changes. There's also, in case people were wondering, an entire warehouse of furniture and art and things where you can go and pick stuff out and make the cosmetic changes that you want to make to the White House. That's different to me than a structural change, like the Oval Office. I'm not into these round walls. Let's just square this place up a little bit. I would assume that that's where these bodies come in where you have to ask or you at least need to get advice from them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Basically, there are two, if you will, decision points here that historically have shaped structural changes to the White House. As Nia's pointed out, one question is, is the project aesthetic or structural? In the past, if it's been aesthetic, by and large, presidents and occasionally, first ladies have wide discretion. We're going to change the wallpaper. We're going to change the color of the paint. We decide to take down certain portraits. We delve into the National Museum of Art and pull out other paintings to put up on the walls.
N. Rodgers: A whole political thing to watch what the President does in the Oval Office with all of that extra stuff. You can't take out the carpet and you can't change the walls. But whose bust is going to be behind you and which paintings are hanging and that kind of thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because you're trying to send a message to all the visitors. Those, by and large, historically, are at the discretion of the President.
N. Rodgers: I can see that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Structural changes, however, have typically had to get the permission of various advisory boards. The Committee for the Preservation of the White House, which was established in 1964. You have the White House Historical Association. This is the nonprofit that provides financial and historical support for various projects and acquisitions for the White House. The National Park Service, which is to maintain the grounds.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say, it's basically a monument.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The National Park Service owns it as a monument.
J. Aughenbaugh: From the tennis courts to the rose garden, etc. Then you have the Committee for Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission. These are federal agencies which have advisory roles over construction projects. For instance, the National Capital Planning Commission was involved during the Truman administration. That was the body that infamously said, if we don't renovate the White House, the White House is going to fall in on itself.
N. Rodgers: That will be embarrassing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which then led to Truman leaving the White House for about a year-and-a-half so that they could go ahead and modernize, refurbish, restructure the entire building. That's one decision point. The second decision point, Nia, you briefly mentioned earlier in the podcast. How is the renovation being funded? Historically, almost every significant renovation, restructuring of the White House was funded out of public money, taxpayer dollars, where Congress specifically appropriated the money for the project.
N. Rodgers: Truman's, that renovation was paid for by congressional dollars.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, taxpayer dollars. Congress appropriated the money and said, we need to go ahead and have a White House that is not falling down. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because that is embarrassing, especially during the Cold War when it would be super embarrassing. The Russians would have had a field day, if the White House had caved in on Truman, don't you think?
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure. Nia, as you pointed out, every presidential administration gets $100,000 at least of recent vintage. They get an allowance of $100,000. Now, some of this money is privately donated, but for redecorating the private residence and the Oval Office, which you described previously.
N. Rodgers: One of the things that Nancy Reagan actually said I think in defense of the China set was that it was privately funded. It was not paid for by the American people.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is where the Trump administration has hung its proverbial hat. The creation of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom is being all privately funded. The day we are recording, I think at least two major media organizations have begun to disclose who these private donors are and how much money they are giving. This is a classic example of providing, shall we say, access to these individuals and corporations. I think Nia is going to share who some of these individuals and organizations are that are contributing money.
N. Rodgers: The ballroom donor list. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta are part of this. The Altria Group, Apple, Booz Allen. If these names sound familiar, it's because these are all contractors with the federal government. Caterpillar, Coinbase, Comcast, and Hard Rock International. I would love it if they did the interior. HP, Lockheed Martin, do these things sound familiar? Microsoft, Palantir. Then there are a few that are people like J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul, the Adelson Family Foundation, Stefan Brodie, Edward and Shari Glazer. If you recognize some of those names, Benjamin Leon, the Lutnick Family, what you're hearing are Republican donor.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Folks who do a lot of donations to the Republican Party, in general.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Republican Party candidates.
N. Rodgers: That's not super surprising that you would line up people. Probably, we will find out later, also helping to fund the Presidential Library, I would think. The Donald Trump Presidential Library. There are probably similar groups that are giving money, but it's in corporation's best interest to give money to the President.
J. Aughenbaugh: They want access.
N. Rodgers: Because some of them are doing deals right now to buy other companies or to buy other things. They want to be looked upon positively by the FCC or the SEC.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Federal Trade Commission, etc. They want to decrease the regulatory burden. They are buying, if you will, goodwill with the current presidential administration that runs these agencies that regulate their businesses.
N. Rodgers: What I would love to know is if anybody's going to get some like the Amazon ballroom or that you know how they do that with ballparks and stuff?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, the naming rights.
N. Rodgers: But I have to think that it's going to be the Trump ballroom, don't you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure, it's going to be the Trump ballroom.
N. Rodgers: I can't imagine him not naming it after himself.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, some of the naming of stadiums and ballparks, they're so tortured. They're long. The stadium has got one name. The field itself has another name. The parking lot has another name. These are all corporations that have donated significant amounts of money, and they want their name plastered all over a place where 50- 60- 70,000 people show up for a ball game. They view it as advertising, a gesture of goodwill. We are a good community partner, blah, blah, blah. I think it will be the Trump ballroom, sponsored by blah, blah, blah. Twenty-first century America.
N. Rodgers: It's pretty amazing when a stadium can keep its name. Doesn't Wrigley still have its name?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. That was named for the family that had ownership of the Chicago Cubs for decades.
N. Rodgers: Is that the gum people?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, the gum people.
N. Rodgers: Wrigley is gum. That's where you could make a fortune. What we're seeing here is that the funding on this thing is private. It is not coming out of federal funds. I have a theory about that. My theory is that, if Donald Trump gets private funding, he doesn't have to ask anybody about the aesthetic. If he gets money from Congress, he's going to have to go to them and say, what do you think about making it?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's when Congress says, have you gotten approval from these advisory groups? Trump doesn't like to get that approval.
N. Rodgers: But if he gets private funding, he can just build it however he wants to build it.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's his argument. His argument is the public's not paying for this. Congress is not allocating any public dollars. Therefore, I don't have to get approval of my plans because I am the head of the executive branch. This is the logic of most of his executive orders. I am in charge.
N. Rodgers: I'm the President.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm the President. I'm in charge of the executive branch. In this instance, he's extending the claim to, and this is my building. This is where I do my work.
J. Aughenbaugh: His press secretary earlier this week said, why would the president have to get anybody else's permission? If Congress wanted to go ahead and change the capitol, why would the Congress have to get anybody else's permission? I'm like, Wow. I'm really looking forward to the press secretary saying, Well, that would be like the president instructing the Supreme Court how to go ahead and decorate their offices. That's the logic of the current president. I'm in charge.
N. Rodgers: My argument against that is, you are a caretaker of an object that belongs to all of us. It is not your personal property. Sometimes I would like nothing more than to take Karoline Leavitt out somewhere.
J. Aughenbaugh: Be careful.
N. Rodgers: And sit her down, and have an honest discussion about the words that come out of her mouth versus what the rest of us think the meaning of democracy is. I would love to have that discussion with her sometime when she's not under the pressure of being stared at by the press and say, do you understand that when you say, Well, it's the president's house? No, it's not. He is a temporary occupant. He is not a king. He's not moving in. He's not going to bid a big T on the front of it. It's not his. He's a caretaker. He does have to keep in mind the rest of us. When I am president, as much as it will kill me to listen to other people, I will have to listen to other people because I will not be a crowned head of the United States. I will be the temporary occupant of the people's house.
J. Aughenbaugh: I would extend that logic even further, Nia, which is, we've had a series of presidents who act as though they define the office of president. No, the office of president is defined in the Constitution. You are occupying a position that has authority that the people have given that position, and they gave it in the Constitution. It should not matter who is the president. It's the office. Just like the White House doesn't belong to you, Mr. President, or Madam President, as the case may be. It belongs to the people of the United States.
N. Rodgers: We're lending it to you to live in.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right, so that you can do the work of the people as prescribed in a governing document. If you don't like what the governing document says, then you got to convince a whole bunch of us that we should change what you do with those authorities. Likewise, you should probably get our buy in before you fundamentally alter the structure of the building. That's my complaint. Because like you, Nia, this idea that since I am in charge of the executive branch, I get to go ahead and do X, Y, and Z because I am in charge. Well, that might be fine in the private sector, but in the public sector, I don't think so. That's where I push back. I don't deny the fact that as president, it would probably be better if we actually had a ballroom that could go ahead and that would not require tents out in the White House lawn for big shindig.
N. Rodgers: I'm not trying to derail. One of the things that women complain about with those tents that is if the ground is soft, their heels stick into the ground and you could get hurt doing that. There's actual real safety issues with that. In addition to it's inconvenient as all get out. I'm all for a ballroom. I'm not sure I'm all for a 90,000 square foot ballroom. I don't know that one needs one quite that large. I'm definitely not for destroying the East wing to get it. Like, there's property there. There's land. They could have just built it in some other way. They chose not to for whatever reason.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or even put in the back of the building, which would go ahead and allow for better security and traffic flow. I mean, that's the other thing. The part of me that spent a few years in Homeland Security, I'm like, once you get better security, if you stuck it into the back of the building, that would actually force a whole bunch of people to go to the back of the White House, which a lot of people don't go to.
N. Rodgers: I mean, there's a fair bit of land there that they could have picked anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a huge property.
N. Rodgers: But also I do think that doing this during the shutdown is particularly problematic. Honestly, I'm trying to give Donald Trump, as you have said, we should do, give him every benefit of the doubt. I don't know that he's trying to do this on the sly, because you can't build a 90,000 square foot space on the sly, but I do think that doing it during the shutdown looks like you're trying to do it on the sly. You know what I mean? It looks sketchy, like, wait a minute. You can't wait until the government's back in.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, off recording me and Nia have a favorite expression, and that is read the room. If the room, in this instance, is the American public.
N. Rodgers: The room is not happy about your ballroom.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's particularly not happy about you doing this when the government is shut down, and when a whole bunch of people here in the next couple of weeks are going to suffer some real pain because parts of the government have been shut down for multiple weeks.
N. Rodgers: Beyond federal workers?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The room is unhappy, and we're only going to get unhappier. Then we're seeing you spend a whole bunch of private money to go ahead and destroy the people's house. The optics of this looks terrible. Even if you are the most generous, inclined to support the current presidential administration, I think many would have to go ahead and say, This is terrible.
N. Rodgers: You're spending $300 million on a ballroom at a time when huge number of federal workers are working without being paid. A huge number of other federal workers have been furloughed, and they're not getting paid. We know that certain things are about to expire, which are going to cause financial hardship for other people like dude. This was not the time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, this was not the time. Nope.
N. Rodgers: You know that the construction companies are getting paid. There's some real angst there. I don't know. The timing on this could have been a lot better. Again, I think Aughe and I both agree. Having a ballroom is not a bad thing. Having a ballroom this big seems excessive.
J. Aughenbaugh: The way they're going about it, again is-
N. Rodgers: Seems sketchy. It probably isn't. It's probably is when the construction companies could do the work.
J. Aughenbaugh: I know many of our listeners are probably tired of hearing me say this. I know my students probably are tired of me saying this. But hardwired into the American system are checks and balances. You need to get approvals from people before you go ahead and do something this significant.
N. Rodgers: This is going to end up being that when the next Congress that's controlled by Democrats, they will come out in force with an act that says you cannot alter the White House without congressional permission or something like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: And imagine just the hearings.
N. Rodgers: I think that'll be. I think Karoline Leavitt has a point about well, would the Congress ask anybody if it was going to alter the dome. We're going to make it flat. We don't like this dommy thing. The answer to that is yes, they would have to talk to the architect of the Capitol. They would probably have to go through hearings because they would have to allot the money. I don't know. I don't think her argument holds, but I do think the other thing is, can he do it? Well, he's doing it, so whether he can do it or not, but like many things that Donald Trump does, there will be fallout. Other people will pay this price. Other candidates for the presidency in the future will pay the price for this. Don't you think there'll be comments about the excessiveness of Republican spending?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I can just imagine some of the future questions in presidential election debates. If you're elected president, which part of the White House are you planning to renovate?
N. Rodgers: For somebody like Donald Trump who really doesn't see beyond himself most of the time, he doesn't care about that, but the party should care about that. We'll see if that has an effect, but you're right, that's going to come up in at least one debate. If you could get a zillion dollars from private donors, what would you do with the White House?
J. Aughenbaugh: Does Mr. or Madam First Lady or first spouse, what plans do they have to redecorate the private residence? And who's going to pay for that? This is going to be a question in a presidential debate where we should be talking about important policy issues.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. We're going to be talking about structural changes to the White House versus aesthetic changes to the White House and what is your opinion on that? When what we should be talking about is, are we going to invade a foreign country? Are we going to have trade tariffs?
J. Aughenbaugh: What are your plans for the economy? How are you going to go ahead and deal with the-
N. Rodgers: How are you going to rebuild manufacturing in the United States?
J. Aughenbaugh: What are you going to do with Social Security, since we're going to run out of money in that fund by 2033. These are important questions. But instead, we're going to go ahead and talk about, so what are your plans for the 90,000 square foot ballroom? Are we going to have rock concerts in the White House?
N. Rodgers: You know what? The one thing that I think he could do that I think might make it more palatable for some people would be to open it for like if there's a huge snowstorm in DC, as a warming center or something like that where you could do public service in that space when it's not being used for the party purpose. I mean, there may be some way that a future president I don't know that Donald Trump would do that, but that a future president might soften this blow a little bit. We'll see.
J. Aughenbaugh: If God forbid, DC gets hit by a hurricane, and a whole bunch of people get displaced, we could go ahead and shelter them in the ballroom.
N. Rodgers: Maybe there's something to be I don't know, to be worked out for that.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're working hard on trying to make this.
N. Rodgers: Maybe if there's a natural disaster, this would have been a good idea, Aughe.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh my God. Sorry, listeners, this is Nia and I tapping into our Homeland Security background.
N. Rodgers: Oh, my goodness. He can do this with private funding. As far as we know, there's no one who could stop him who could have stopped him from doing this. There are people who could have advised against it. But until Congress acts to make the People's House inviable by the president physically. There's nothing to stop it.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. I mean, it's unfortunate.
N. Rodgers: Which means I'm painting that sucker purple as soon as I land in the Oval Office. I'm just saying the whole thing. We're going all out.
J. Aughenbaugh: See, I'm going black and gold for two reasons. One, those are the colors of VCU, two.
N. Rodgers: Do you believe black and gold?
J. Aughenbaugh: Those are the colors of two of my favorite sports teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Pittsburgh Penguins. It will be black and gold. Sorry. If that gives you reason to never vote for me for president, that's alright. I'll sleep well at night knowing that.
N. Rodgers: Well, I'm that happy note. Thanks, Aughe.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thanks, Nia.