Hello, good friends. Good to see you again. And welcome to this week's roundtable,

where we look back at the big news of the week with the help of three of Washington's top political reporters.

This was a week when both Donald Trump and Joe Biden were on the road to keep battlegrounds state,

as polls show Biden still in the lead, but Trump narrowing the gap.

The week when two historic Middle East agreements were signed at the White House,

when the president continued to deal with fallout from Bob Woodward's book,

all captured on tape, of course, when in the face of COVID-19, Donald Trump ignored health

precautions by holding indoor political rallies and promising a vaccine by November 3rd.

And the week when nature took center stage with America, burning up in the

West and drowning in the East. Here to try to put all of this stuff in perspective.

Nikki Schwab, senior U.S. political reporter for the Daily Mail. Hi, Nikki.

Hi, Bill. And Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington editor for NBC News Digital, Ginger.

Welcome back. Glad to be here. And Niall Stein is joining us again, political reporter and White

House columnist for The Hill. Hello, Niall. Hey, Bill. Okay, folks, I'd like to start with a rather bizarre exchange that happened just a Wednesday

evening between the President of the United States and the head of the Center for Disease

Control.

First of all, Robert Redfield, the CDC head, testified earlier in the day in front of

Congress about the value and the importance of wearing a mask. Here he is. I might even go so far as to

say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine, because the immunogenicity may be

70%. And if I don't get an immune response, the vaccine's not going to protect me. This face mask will.

So there's one of America's top leading public health professionals saying this mask is so important, maybe

even more important than the vaccine. President Trump is asked about that later in the afternoon

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