Dan Diamond

And normally it would go through a review process before this kind of project began.

Well, President Trump has said it's going to be 90,000 square feet, which is...

Significant.

The White House residence, that main building, is 55,000 square feet.

So we're talking about an addition that would effectively double the size of the White House.

But it's hard to say, Noel, exactly how big it is and what it's going to look like because President Trump has changed repeatedly.

The capacity of the ballroom, for instance.

He said it was going to be 650 people.

Now he's saying it's going to be about 1,000.

He said it would be a $200 million project.

He's steadily raised that now to $300 million.

So it seems like things are in flux, and what might have been the size of the White House ballroom might not be what it ends up being.

I think what President Trump has showed us, not just with this ballroom, but with many things this year, is whether or not he's allowed, he's going to do it.

And in this case, there was a loophole, it appears, on demolishing...

parts of the White House campus.

Normally, a president would go through the process of seeking review and approval from several commissions that help guide historic development on the White House grounds.

And that kind of work meant waiting, usually, to demolish things before you got approval to go ahead.

President Trump and his team realized, and apparently this is legal, that they could just demolish something.

The building may still have to wait for approval, but the demolishing the president could do.

So what the White House has said, and there is some truth to this, that presidents have long needed an event space to host major VIPs, to have something that is indoors rather than the tent that is sometimes set up when the White House wants to have hundreds of people on the grounds.