Good morning. I'm James Holman from the Washington Post and this is the Daily

2002 for Tuesday, October 20th. In today's news, a four Supreme Court split on a

voting case shows why confirming Amy

Coney Barrett is such a huge deal. The Justice Department

indicts six Russian intelligence officers and several high-profile cyber attacks, and our newest poll shows

North Carolina is a dead heat. But first, the big idea.

President Trump dismissed precautions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus yesterday

and attacked the nation's top infectious disease expert as a disaster, arguing that people are getting

tired of all the focus on a pandemic that has killed about 220,000 Americans

and continues to infect tens of thousands of people in communities across the country every day.

The President claimed that voters don't want to hear anymore from the country's scientific

leaders about the virus, responding angrily to a critical interview Sunday night that

Fauchy gave to CBS's 60 minutes. Later in the day the president again attacked

Fauchy, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases,

mocking him for his botched ceremonial first pitch at Nationals Park on opening day

and misrepresenting several of the doctor's positions on coronavirus in tweets.

Trump's comments and his aggressive travel schedule,

which continued Monday with two stops in Arizona,

as Joe Biden stayed at home in Delaware,

is part of a broader and more aggressive bet that the American people will reward his

projection of strength and general defiance toward the virus which hospitalized

the president for three days and infected many of his top aides earlier this month.

...