Ominous news out of north korea as there is a demand from kim jongun. Why . Welcome to the lead, im jake tapper. Our politics lead. President trump is under pressure both from the pending democraticcontrolled house and from potential moves by special counsel, Robert Mueller. So as the president does, when feeling the heat from situations that are often largely of his own doing, hes now seeking to blame others in his orbit as top officials at the white house and the Trump Administration prepare for a purge. Asserting this afternoon, the president is happy with, quote, almost all of his cabinet officials. The president has in recent days been talking to aides and advisers about possibly getting rid of chief of staff, john kelly. And department of Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen. But would that solve anything . As one Senior Administration official put it to me, quote, in this administration, there are arsonists and there are firefighters. The president is looking to get rid
working for everyone. and so among those priorities, those are pretty broad brush priorities. they re important to people. they re kind of governance issues, right? not necessarily, you know, i supported this project of the president, which might be stereo typically considered to be conservative. exactly. so when we re looking at places where we can find some level of real positive forward movement, i think it s incumbent upon us as a broad democratic party to find places where we can create impactful legislation and where possible, work across party lines so that we re not volleying back and forth as we did in recent years. i know don t know details, but the house ethics committee sanctioned two male colleagues. an outgoing democratic congressman, reuben kuhn and mark mettis, who is accused of not firing his chief of staff after accused of sexually harassing his female co-workers,