By Stephen Dinan (The Washington Times)
It was March 22, 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic was seriously biting, with more than 10,000 new cases and more than 125 new deaths — and Dr. Anthony Fauci was obsessed with how much media attention he was getting.
“Press is going wild with me,” he wrote in his personal diary, according to a version newly released by Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, in which he marveled at his domination of the newspapers and, in particular, their willingness to side with him over President Trump.
Mr. Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released the document just days before Dr. Fauci is slated to appear before the panel in a final showdown between the two men.
The diary, which spans 1,141 pages of an electronic document, details Dr. Fauci’s thinking as COVID-19 emerged in China, spread to the U.S. and grew more deadly.
It shows Dr. Fauci to be an early user of the now-disfavored term “Wuhan virus” to refer to SARS-CoV-2, which emerged in Wuhan, China.
Dr. Fauci also described in his writings his fealty to the idea that the virus leaped from animals to humans and his rejection of the alternative hypothesis that it originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
When the FBI’s experts began to believe in 2021 that the lab was the source, he ridiculed them and said they had “no idea what they’re talking about.”
Dr. Fauci also detailed his tricky relationship with Mr. Trump.
In January 2020, Mr. Trump walked into an early meeting about the coronavirus and, according to the diary, was intent on making sure he and Dr. Fauci were on the same page. “We are counting on you,” the president purportedly said.
A year later, on Inauguration Day for President Biden, Dr. Fauci pronounced Mr. Trump “a very dangerous man!!”
Dr. Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases when the pandemic emerged. For many Americans, particularly those who disdained Mr. Trump, he became the face of the virus and the effort to combat it.
The adulation bordered on deification, with “In Fauci we trust” becoming a slogan.
He would stay on to serve Mr. Biden as chief pandemic adviser, though by then he had become a polarizing figure.
As the pandemic has receded, Dr. Fauci’s legacy has been reevaluated. His instruction in early March 2020 that “people should not be walking around with masks” aged poorly, and his diary reflects his own internal thoughts.
“We probably were too strong in saying masks do not work,” Dr. Fauci recorded on March 31, just before the government officially came out in favor of masking.
In addition to Mr. Trump, Dr. Fauci had plenty to say about other figures.
He complained about “the amateurs” from the CIA who were assigned to brief him, called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “a total jerk” for his handling of the pandemic in his state, and called Trump confidant Peter Navarro an “amazing a—hole!!!”
Mr. Paul, an ophthalmologist who earned his medical degree from Duke University and tussled with Dr. Fauci over the years on pandemic management, was a particular focus of the diary.
“His usual stupid self,” Dr. Fauci said at one point. Another time, he called Mr. Paul “a total a—hole!!”
“Rand Paul still coming after me saying that I should shut everything down. Contradicting him by showing quotes from me to the contrary. What a jerk!” Dr. Fauci recorded on Dec. 1, 2020.
Mr. Paul said in a fundraising email to supporters Monday that he had to subpoena Dr. Fauci to force him to testify, and he laid out the questions he wants to ask.
“Why did the NIH funnel millions into dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan? What role did he play in covering up the origins of COVID? Why did he feel he needed a preemptive pardon [from Mr. Biden] if he did nothing wrong?” Mr. Paul said.
In releasing the diary, Mr. Paul’s office said the near-daily writings “completely undermine” what Dr. Fauci was saying publicly at the time.
The diary details just how much trust some in the country placed in Dr. Fauci.
He recalled advising Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League on how to handle the shutdown and restart their seasons.
As he was battling the Trump administration and Mr. Paul, Dr. Fauci delighted in having so much of the media on his side.
In July 2020, as the Trump White House’s frustration with Dr. Fauci showed, he wrote: “I have been contacted by virtually every reporter (Post, NY Times, multiple CNN – Sanjay Gupta, Jim Sciutto, networks) that I have ever dealt with and they are consistently outraged by the disinformation campaign of the WH against me and the attempt to discredit me.”
Indeed, CNN emerged as a particular ally.
He said he became friends with then-CNN host Chris Cuomo and recounted how, during Mr. Trump’s first 2020 campaign debate with Mr. Biden, Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Sciutto texted Dr. Fauci, begging him to “counter” what Mr. Trump was saying on stage about masking.
It was not all positive, though.
In recounting an interview with CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, he said the “problem with her is that she tends to dramatize things, which can get me in trouble no matter how many caveats I give her.”
This article was made available to WMAL via The Washington Times.
