No Mercy / No Malice: Break Now, Fix Later

Business travel can be a schlep. So Injen did the legwork and simplified it once and for all. With Injen, you can book, manage, and save big on every flight, car, and hotel for yourself, for your team, or for your whole company, all in one intuitive platform. Book your business travel at engine.com today and make work travel less work. K pop demon hunters, Hajja Boy's breakfast meal and Huntrix meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day. It is an honor to share. No. It's our honor. It is our larger honor. No. Really. Stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side. I participate in McDonald's while supplies last. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsored jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate see. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hey, everyone. This is Ed Elson. Scott is out on vacation, so I'm subbing in for him. This week on No Mercy, No Malice, we're running the latest edition of my newsletter, Simply Put. There is a saying that captures the disruptive nature of Silicon Valley. Move fast and break things. A similar but far more damaging framework informs nearly every policy decision that Donald Trump makes. From the East Wing Ballroom, to tariffs, to Iran. Break now, fix later, as read by George Hahn. Here's a question for you. What was last week's most important headline? Was it Trump's address to the nation where he told us nothing? Was it the jobs report, which will likely be revised down? Was it the firing of Pam Bondi, who will likely be replaced by someone worse? No. Last week's most important headline was something else. Per The Wall Street Journal, judge halts construction of Trump's White House ballroom. We'll get to why this matters in a moment, but first, a quick refresher on this ballroom. Last summer, president Trump announced plans to build a 90,000 square foot ballroom for a proposed budget of $200,000,000. That budget has since doubled. In order to do this, he needed to demolish the East Wing, a historic portion of the White House complex that was built more than a hundred years ago. This was a controversial decision that required permission from congress. However, Trump didn't seek any permissions and tore down the East Wing anyway, giving rise to one of the most iconic and disturbing images in recent memory. The structure …