Why use this code in the how-to video?

Good afternoon, everyone, I am currently working through the Python project Thread Shed and got stuck, so I watched the video of someone doing the problem themselves which left me with a question. Here is the llink
Python: Strings | Codecademy

On Task 8 you are cleaning up strings using for loops. You have to dig further down into the list to clean everything up, but the solution code confused me a little bit. Here is the recommended code:

transactions_clean =
for transaction in daily_transactions_split:
transaction_clean =
for data_point in transaction:
transaction_clean.append(data_point.replace(“\n”, “”).strip())
transactions_clean.append(transaction_clean)

My question is, why make a whole second blank list? Wouldn’t something like this do the same thing?

transactions_clean =
for transaction in daily_transactions_split:
for data_point in transaction:
transactions_clean.append(data_point.replace(“\n”, “”).strip())

I ran them both and the outcome looks similar, so maybe my untrained eye isn’t seeing something. I am just having trouble visualizing why you would need to make another blank list if the purpose is just to drill down deeper into the data.