Happy Thursday morning, I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your Politico Playbook Audio Briefing,

sponsored by the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs.

Big news out of the Korean Peninsula this morning.

North Korea is drawing up plans to launch missiles at Guam.

Needless to say, this is going to be a big, defining, geopolitical moment for Donald Trump.

Sure, the North Korean saber rattle. They say

they're going to do things many times that they don't do, but this is a big deal. If the North

Koreans shoot a missile anywhere close to the U.S. territory, it will spark a big conflict with

Japan and South Korea. The FT says markets are reacting and investors are preparing for the worst.

The Swiss franc, a safe haven currency, is up 1.5% against the euro. Spotted yesterday, Mr. Cosmopolitan

himself, Stephen Miller in a summer linen sport coat outside Woodward table on 15th Street.

Nikki Haley has lost her chief of staff and speechwriter at the same time due to, quote,

family issues.

Stephen Groves and Jonathan Wachtell are both departing Haley staff.

Fascinating comments from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell out of northern Kentucky.

He says that one of the reasons the White House is subject to a narrative that they've done nothing

is that they've set artificial deadlines. We've been saying this forever. There's no reason

to say something is going to get done by a certain date unless it's government funding or the

debt ceiling. For example, there's no reason to say that tax reform is going to be done by

the end of October because it's probably

not. Oh yeah, and McConnell again urged the president to stop tweeting. Mark Caputo has a great

piece in Politico about the shrinking political fortunes of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Here's an excerpt

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