run ning on the field and tackling the player are two very different things. lots of news. we re watching. today we re going to have much more of our coverage of hurricane idalia. it s a strong category 1 storm hitting florida at this point. live pictures now from key west. you can see the stroong winds there hitting the southern keys. people are still taking photographs. i would suggest to get away from the coastline. there are a the lot of mandatory evacuation orders. do stay with cnn for our coverage of hurricane idalia the lead with jake tapper starts now. welcome to the lead. i m georjake tapper. we start today with breaking
I m grateful to the talented and dedicated team at the federal reserve with whom it has been my great privilege to serve over the last decade. my predecessor, secretary janet yellen, left the fed in stroong position to meet every challenge, and i m thankful for her leadership, her example and her friendship. when video hit our showers shores, american businesses were ten years into expansion with a robust jobs market that was reaching those traditionally left out. the pandemic brought an immediate and painful recession. fortunately, american resilience along with strong policy actions and vaccines that enable the economy s reopening, cushioned the blows and set the stage for a strong recovery. today, the economy is expanding at its fastest pace in many years. carrying the promise of return to maximum employment. challenges and opportunities
Sharing the blame, that puts him in a tough spot. usually democratic presidents are used to being in stroong position when they go against republicans whether on government shutdowns or raising the debt ceiling. of course the deficit has been cut in half. a lot of trend s. a lot of us said it would happen a year ago. the sequester is in place and now the white house finds itself in a difficult position. the president s position is i m going to raise the debt ceiling. this is nothing you can do about it. i will not negotiate. this latest poll shows 61% of americans are saying, yes, you are. we re with the republicans on this issue. how does the white house deal with it? i m surprised by the numbers. one of the t things the white house assumed is the country didn t have the appetite for the emotion al turmoil vis-a-vis political negotiations.
Have been following general petraeus for a long time. he s been doing both. he s continuing to train and build the afghan national army and police. he s also building bottom-up, something he calls the afghan local police which is essentially a local militia. he s got special forces, trainers out all over the country. i have to be honest, that was the most impressive piece of that story that i watched during the visit. so in every little valley and mountain hollow of this big country, we re trying to send in people, local people who want to stand up to the taliban fshlgs give them guns, money, training so at the bottom-up level you ll have finder of resistance. meanwhile, hopefully, the national army gets stroong enough to be able to have a national rep. david, just talking about local governance, trying to incorporate local governance into specific areas as andrea
Has gone back to his residence. earlier state department officials declined to comment on the prospect of kree giegypt s president morsi, but they conceded his call for aununity government wasn t enough. he s seen that was not asfac. it is not for us to judge that. but it doesn t seem like it s a new step. reporter: hours before, against secretary hagel spoke to his egyptian counterpart. secretary of state kerry has spoken twice with egypt s outgoing foreign minister. and president obama has urged morsi to reach out to the opposition. but many egyptian protesters feel the u.s. support of morsi has been too stroong. signs denouncing the u.n. ambassador. his position is mush. the people demonstrating against