Newly released diary entries from Dr. Anthony Fauci show the former White House COVID-19 adviser grew increasingly consumed with his own celebrity as the pandemic’s death toll climbed, according to journals released by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky.
Paul, a longtime Fauci critic who has repeatedly clashed with him over the origins of COVID-19 and the federal pandemic response, released the diaries as part of the committee’s ongoing oversight investigation.
The release comes just days before Fauci is set to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee under subpoena.
Newly released diary entries from Dr. Anthony Fauci reveal his private thoughts as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded.
Sen. Rand Paul released the entries ahead of Fauci's upcoming Senate testimony.
In the entries, Fauci chronicled his day-to-day role during the pandemic, reflected… pic.twitter.com/qg77sLPEyH
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The entries span the height of the pandemic, which ultimately claimed more than 7 million lives worldwide and roughly 1.2 million in the United States. Throughout, Fauci repeatedly returns to his own rising public profile.
Here’s a snapshot of some of the experts.
On April 7, 2020, he wrote that the press was still “hot and heavy about me,” noting multiple daily stories tied to him.
On May 21, a day he also logged nearly 98,000 global deaths and more than 27,000 U.S. deaths, Fauci described his fame as “explosive and really unimaginable,” writing it was no exaggeration to call himself the most talked-about person in the country.
He also wrote that Trump seemed drawn to him despite the attention pulling focus from the president, and noted that Secret Service agents had grown familiar enough with him to wave him through security without an ID check.
A month later, as the U.S. logged a record 40,000 new cases in a single day, Fauci noted he’d been invited to appear on “Dancing With the Stars.”
On July 2, 2020, warning the country could see an “exponential” case increase heading into the Fourth of July weekend, Fauci wrote that the president and his team had largely stopped acknowledging the outbreak.
Fauci also complained in multiple entries that White House communications staff were blocking him from major TV appearances, and that officials were frustrated by media coverage he said made him look like he was “outshining” Trump.
Fauci also pushed back on what he called “countless” media profiles written about him, insisting several ran without his input, and eventually stopped sitting for interviews altogether, writing he had no wish to embarrass or upstage the president.
Fauci is scheduled to testify before the Senate panel in the coming days. Paul’s office has said the diary release is part of a broader investigation into COVID-19’s origins and the federal government’s early pandemic response.