Why Donald Trump is buying Ed McMahon's house

Trump is bailing out McMahon, but is it a selfless act?

It’s almost as if Ed McMahon has “won his own Publisher’s Clearing House contest,” said Chris Serico in the blog Suburbarazzi. Donald Trump has offered to buy the former Tonight Show announcer’s Beverly Hills Mansion, which had recently been foreclosed on, and allow McMahon to continue living there. “Trump’s offer seems generous, but let’s hope McMahon doesn’t have to compete on The Celebrity Apprentice to win back his house.”

Give Trump some credit, said Deidre Woollard the blog Luxist. This bailout wasn't his idea—McMahon's listing agent “flew to New York to make a personal pitch to Trump to save McMahon’s home.” But Trump probably didn't go along entirely out of the goodness of his heart. He's buying the house, then leasing it back to McMahon.

You're too kind, said Zac Bissonnette in BloggingStocks. Out of the “hundreds of thousands of people facing problems with their homes” right now, Trump “spends millions of dollars to help one old rich guy keep his palace—and then calls the Los Angeles Times to brag about it”? Like everything Trump does, this "act of charity" was “motivated by narcissism, grandiosity, and a thirst for publicity.”