a very important friday. we will reconvene the courthouse gang for this hour to go over what we have all been through and, alex, just a word about a banana republic. i despise the term and have despised it for so long now because it carries the assumption that countries that grow bananas, and we know where they are, somehow inherently have inferior governments to ours. which we have proven many times before is not true and nothing proves that better than the trump years and, oh, by the way, we grow bananas in hawaii. agriculturally and ethically, great points, lawrence, as always. thanks, alex. have a great show. thanks. well, it was a one word sentence that changed donald trump s life. he wasn t expecting to hear that word yesterday. at 4:15 p.m., judge merchan told defendant donald trump and his lawyers, the prosecutors in the courtroom, quote, i m going to excuse the jury about 4:30. we will give them a few more minutes and then we will excuse them. donald trum
trump at the defense table that we have never seen before. he was joking, he was laughing, he was smiling with todd blanche. they were laughing almost incessantly. todd blanche laughing so hard at one point, doubling over that his four head almost touched the table. they thought they were going home today, it seemed, without a verdict. it was almost a jubilant and giddy donald trump, but that changed quickly when judge merchan came back in the room to inform the parties the jury had reached that verdict. the jury had a verdict after only nine hours of deliberation, which is not a long deliberation for a 34 count indictment of this complexity level. so donald trump watched his jury into the courtroom for what would be the final time. the jury walked by him, as they always did, at high speed,
reform. it takes a couple years generally to do it, and coming up with something that is revenue neutral or, you know, deficit neutral this is a tax cut. yes, there is that, but just the complexity level, i have been surveying people on the hill all week. what is more complicated or hard to do and some people are split. . it was enormously hard to get it passed. having gone through the 86 story, tax reform touching everybody. they have trillions of dollars at stake, and they are doing it and it is even harder to do. smully, or in theory, at least, and look like they re trying.
anything on it. the only thing more complex legislatively than health care is trade, international trade. to reopen a nafta negotiation is something that this congress is totally incapable of doing. takes years to do and has a complexity level that nobo there n hand. so that s going to be a zero. and they don t even have a tax cut plan available to even look at yet. and before any of this, the next thing that has to come on the legislative calendar is a bill to keep the government open. a government shutdown if they don t pass a bill by april 28th to do that. the national institutes of health to pay for a wall, military expansion. and people in congress have been ignoring this document. the spending bill has to get 60 votes which means any increase in military spending has to come with increes in domestic spending, not cuts. the bill will be a total defeat for the president on policy assuming paul ryan is able to get anything out of the house of reps.
in the republican campaign and whenever you run the math on it, it hurts anyone but the super rich and has a complexity level that i don t think joe quite realizes. what would you say to constituents in toledo about how 9-9-9 would affect them? first of all, i think 9-9-9 would not encourage investment in the usa, but out sourcing. we have to have a tax code to make goods in america and grow goods in america and ship them elsewhere. i think that the bill that the proposal that you are talking about would increase taxes on the middle class. we have been trying to relieve that tax burden and also on the working class and poor. i think that s where we need to increase consumer spending. they said marcie, bring me customers. they need people who are earning money and buy goods to move the economy forward.