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

2002 for Wednesday, October 7th. In today's news, the secretive group Amy Coney Barrett was a handmaid for is trying to hide

records of her role. Mike Pence reluctantly agrees to plexiglass barriers in tonight's

VP debate.

And a long delayed DHS report says white supremacists

pose the most persistent and lethal threat to our country.

But first, the big idea. The United States

has lost more people to the coronavirus than any other country in the world.

We have 4% of the world's population, but more than 25% of its dead.

Yet President Trump, in his own personal battle with the virus, cannot even control the outbreak in his own personal battle with the virus cannot even control the outbreak in his own home or office.

A surge of new infections inside the White House, less than a month before the election,

ensures that COVID-19 will be the top issue, and they've become

a symbol of this administration's failure to lead on the pandemic for more than seven months. Trump is back to downplaying the virus today saying it's no worse than the flu, which is very much not true.

Last night, Domestic Policy Advisor Stephen Miller joined the growing list of more than a dozen White House officials to test positive, in addition to the President and First Lady.

And those are just the ones we know about. There is good reason to believe that several people, senior people,

inside the White House, have tested positive,

but they're trying to keep it quiet.

And here's the thing. It didn't have to be this way. For context, Taiwan, the self-ruled

island home to 23 million people reported just eight new cases in the last week. More than a dozen

developed countries have reported fewer than 10 new coronavirus cases over the past seven days,

including several that have not reported any cases at all.

In other words, there are more new cases in the White House than in a bunch of countries.

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