Welcome to the lead, I'm Jake Tapper, as the nation continues to head into an election

where Donald Trump, as of now, seems likely to be the next Republican presidential nominee.

And according to polls, has a decent shot of beating President Joe Biden in November

of 2024, two pieces of news seem instructive.

Now, one you may have missed from last Friday.

When Mr. Trump took to his social media platform and responded to a profile of outgoing joint

chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, in the Atlantic magazine called The Patriot,

describing the ways Milley tried to guide the nation through the chaotic and dangerous period,

surrounding Trump's loss to Biden in November 2020. This included when learning that the Chinese

military believed that Trump was going to order an attack against the Chinese and a phone call

authorized by the then acting Secretary of Defense, General Milley saw to reassure the Chinese

that no such attack was imminent. Trump took to Truth Social Friday and called Milley's action

quote, an act so egregious that in times gone by, the punishment would have been death, unquote.

Death. That's right. Former President of the United States, who well

may be the next President of the United States, suggesting in no uncertain terms

that America's highest-ranking military official, a veteran of multiple combat tours in Afghanistan

and in Iraq, deserves to be executed. A man whose followers have a troubling habit of

flooding his perceived enemies with death threats. That happened. The second piece of news comes

from the former top aide to Mark Meadows, Trump's last White House chief of staff, Cassidy Hutchinson,

the star witness in last summer's January 6th committee's hearing, her new book Enough

Published Today. In the book, Hutchinson paints a picture of the closing days of the Trump White

House even more chaotic, even more lawless than described in her shocking testimony. For example,

...