Sammy Westfall and Dan Diamond
Anthony Fauci, the US National Institutes of Health scientist who helped lead the response to the coronavirus pandemic before stepping down in late 2022, privately complained about President Donald Trump’s “rambling” and revelled in media coverage of his role, according to personal diary entries released this weekend by Republican senator Rand Paul.
Paul, who is investigating the origins of COVID-19, has called Fauci to testify on the pandemic before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday. Paul has maintained for years that Fauci helped cover up the possibility that the coronavirus leaked from a lab, a claim that Fauci has persistently denied.
The personal diary consists of more than 1000 pages of near-daily entries during the pandemic’s most critical months, providing an intimate look at how the prominent scientist at the centre of the nation’s pandemic response navigated two presidential administrations during the spiralling health crisis.
When asked about the diary entries on Monday, a spokesperson for Fauci declined to comment. The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Here are some of the key takeaways:
Hot and cold relations with Trump
Fauci spent part of the first year of the pandemic working with Trump and trying to counteract the president’s comments downplaying the outbreak – a challenge he detailed in many journal entries.
The first time they met in the Situation Room, on January 29, 2020, they appeared to get along. Fauci wrote: “The president came in and the first thing he said as he looked at me was: ‘Anthony, you are really a famous guy. My good friend Lou Dobbs … told me that you were one of the smartest, knowledgeable and outstanding persons he knows.’ He then stayed for 20 minutes and asked most of his questions of me. I was surprised and very pleased and the Deputies were clearly stunned and impressed.”
When Trump walked out of the room, Fauci recalled the president saying: “Thanks, again, Anthony. We are counting on you.”
In late February, he wrote that Trump had called him about the COVID situation, and Fauci said that he “encouraged him not to underplay the seriousness of the situation since if it turns out bad, it would look like he is covering up. … I thought that he heard what I said, but the next day, he again underplayed it.”
But in a pair of entries the next month, Fauci wrote about growing tired of Trump’s “rambling.”
March 27, 2020: “Very laborious press conference where the POTUS rambled on. He wasted the opportunity to just focus on the relief package and went into his diatribe against previous administrations.”
‘Mr President, can I be absolutely frank with you? We have a problem and we need to own it. We need to admit that the situation is serious, otherwise we completely lose credibility. He was not entirely happy with this but said that he understood the point that I was making.’
Excerpt from Fauci’s journal
March 28, 2020: “AMAZING interaction with POTUS. … I led the discussions since the POTUS kept referring to me. It was a disturbingly rambling discussion since he kept talking about TV ratings, and HC [Hydroxychloroquine], and influenza and virtually everything else as I was trying to keep him on track (with the help of the VP). … I insisted through the rambling and lack of attention span that the POTUS explicitly say that this is NOT a quarantine.”
On June 2, 2020, he wrote about a more positive meeting with Trump in the Oval Office focused on COVID vaccines. “As usual, POTUS was very warm and friendly with me. When he walked into the Oval with us waiting, I was standing next to the door and he said ‘I love you, Tony. I feel like giving you a big hug.’”
In the summer of 2020, Fauci repeatedly wrote about the media “making an open conflict between me and Trump”, as he told the president and other administration officials to stop downplaying the crisis.
On July 10, Fauci wrote that he had an “important meeting” with Mike Pence, during which Fauci told the vice president he would be “coldly honest”
“I then told him that he is completely losing credibility when we have >60,000 new cases with increased hospitalizations and deaths and he starts off at the Pressers saying ‘We are in a good place.’”
Fauci took a similar approach with Trump, detailing how he got a call from Trump on July 15 – an “Amazing Day!!” Fauci wrote – in which the president “started off by saying that this tension of me versus him is terrible and needs to stop. He ‘loves’ me and know we have a very special relationship and have bonded right from the beginning.”
Fauci continued: “He then started to talk to me about how bad or not things were. He wanted me to be “positive”. I took the opportunity to say’ ‘Mr. President, with your permission, can I be absolutely frank with you? We have a problem and we need to own it. We need to admit that the situation is serious, otherwise we completely lose credibility. He was not entirely happy with this but said that he understood the point that I was making. It was a very good conversation.”
Fauci wrote on August 4 that he had to directly explain to Trump – whom he described as “throwing around the F— word” and “raving that we are seeing more cases only because we are doing more testing” – that increased testing does not cause cases.
“All in all it was a manifestation that he is desparate and still does not understand the pandemic. Very interesting encounter,” Fauci wrote.
Fauci wrote on August 8: “POTUS acting even more erratically. Keeps insisting that increased case numbers are due only to increased testing, ignoring the increases in per cent positive, hospitalizations and deaths (>1000/day).”
On November 1, 2020, after an interview with Fauci published in The Washington Post, Trump called him from Air Force One. According to the diary, Trump said: “Tony, I really like you, and you know that, but what the f— are you doing? You constantly drop bombs on me. Everybody wants me to fire you, but I am not going to fire you, you have too illustrious a career, but you have to be positive.”
Trump continued: “I like you, but so many people, not only in the White House, but throughout the country, hate you because of what you are doing. … And that f—er Biden. He is so f—ing stupid. You are 10 times smarter than he is. I am going to kick his f—ing ass in this election. I will win by a landslide. Just wait and see. … Tony, you have to be positive. I do not want to keep you off TV, but when you are out there, you have to be positive.”
Fauci also criticised the president for his election denial claims:
November 10, 2020: “POTUS still insisting that the GOP won the election. Completely alternate universe. Kayleigh and GOP Senators (Graham, McConnell, Ted Cruz) all prostituting themselves by supporting the POTUS’s baseless claims. Heading towards a constitutional crisis.”
November 16, 2020: “Continual surge: 138,000 new infections yesterday. POTUS has no interest at all in the Pandemic. He is focusing on blocking Biden from being POTUS. He is embarrassing the USA. However, 72,000,000 voted for him. Difficult to understand. Craziness has overtaken part of our country.”
In a March 29, 2021 entry, Fauci wrote that Trump “is truly an obnoxious adolescent”.
Lab-leak theory
Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, Paul has focused on Fauci’s diary entries addressing a theory that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. Paul has long argued that Fauci and other government leaders were not forthcoming about American ties to virus research conducted in Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak was first detected in 2019.
Fauci has persistently denied Paul’s claims. His diary entries, which trace his thinking on the virus’s possible origins, echo this position.
On January 26, 2020, Fauci wrote that new data showed “the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market” – referring to a “wet market” in Wuhan where animals were sold – spreading among people weeks before the outbreak was publicly reported.
“Remember, early on the Chinese were saying that there is no human to human transmission and all the original 27 cases were from the market. Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” he wrote.
Five days later, Fauci wrote that he got a call from a biologist for advice about dealing with “conspiracy theories” that the virus was given inserted mutations and deliberately or accidentally released in Wuhan. Fauci wrote that he suggested that a larger group of evolutionary biologists and virologists come together, which happened the following day.
After the meeting of experts, Fauci recounted that “there was not total agreement about the likelihood of deliberate insertion.” They agreed to see if the World Health Organisation could convene more experts.
Paul and other critics of Fauci have said that he should have been more immediately forthcoming about his early doubts about the virus’s origins. Fauci and his allies have pointed to comments such as a February 2020 interview with USA Today, in which Fauci acknowledged that the market may have been an “amplifier” for the virus and said that people were “actually looking at” whether the virus had been accidentally or deliberately released, although he downplayed the possibility.
Several times in his diary, Fauci decried the mounting questions from Paul and others about whether there had been a cover-up of the virus’s origins.
In April 2021, Fauci wrote that members of the “radical right wing” and officials such as Paul were trying to “connect me with the virus from WUHAN. … They are saying that I deliberately worked with the Chinese together with [zoologist] Peter Daszak to create a virus that would be released to the world. This sounds very much like a way-out conspiracy theory, which it is. However, there are enough crazy people around to make this a problem.”
The following month, he wrote: “The issue of the escape of the virus from the Wuhan Chinese lab is starting to heat up again” – spurred on by “the usual cast of characters.”
Fauci later dismissed this idea again as a “typical conspiracy theory.”
In May 2021, he wrote that the situation was getting “out of control” with press reports “concerning my ‘flip-flopping’” on theories of the virus’s origin.
“I had always said that the very highly likelihood is that the virus originated naturally from an animal reservoir jumping to a human. However, over the past couple of days given the amount of speculation about the possibility of a lab leak I have been saying that no one is 100% certain of the origin including me and so I am calling for a thorough investigation.”
“Calling for an investigation is merely to put to rest the extraordinary amount of speculation and conspiracy theories,” he continued. “However, this is being interpreted as Fauci flip-flopping again. The far right is really amazing in their distortion of reality.”
Moments of celebrity
As his global notoriety grew, Fauci contended with, and sometimes revelled in, his positive press coverage and moments of fame.
On March 10, 2020: “For better or worse, I am becoming an international celebrity. Calls from all over the world.”
Twelve days later, he wrote: “WH press conference picked up by many outlets. Many print profiles and features on me. Ridiculous – too numeous to count! … Press is going wild with me.”
The next day, he wrote: “Apparently the WH is very upset that I am being profiled and it looks like I am putting down the POTUS and becoming a star that outshines him. The press is playing into this as is the tweet storm. Very stressful!!”
Three days later: “CRAZY, CRAZY – donuts are being named after me; T shirts have my picture on them and are being sold; San Francisco radio is dedicating a song to me … face time with Trevor Noah; Instagram with Steph Curry.”
“Press still hot and heavy about me,” he wrote the next month. (He linked to an Atlantic article headlined “Why America Is Thirsty for Anthony Fauci”).
In May, he wrote, “The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyoperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson in the world. … I cannot even read all the things that are written abuyt me since I am so busy….seriously. POTUS seems to be enamored of me even though I am taking the spotlight away from him. We are developing a very unique and interesting relationship. … Everyone is worried about my health and welfare, probably because it is all over the place that I am almost 80 years old.”
“I have been invited to appear on Dancing with the Stars – no thanks!” he wrote in June 2020.
In his diaries, he wrote of interacting with celebrities, including Julia Roberts (“She was absolutely fabulous. She embarrassed me somewhat when I sat down in the chair and appeared on the screen through Zoom, she put her hands in front of her mouth and said ‘Oh my God. It’s Dr. Fauci, he is here.’); Joan Baez, whom he said had become a “really nice pen pal” by August 2020; and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who, during a public fireside chat, told him: “‘from one basketball player to another’, thank you for all you have done”.)
In December 2022, he wrote after the Kennedy Centre Awards that “the situation was somewhat unusual as I was completely swamped with people yelling my name and applauding it as I left the vehicle. … I was amazed how this recognition of me has reached such a height. I am certainly not getting a big head about it but it is rather weird and a little bit unnerving.”
Fauci also detailed extended conversations with members of the media, including some journalists who privately praised him, as well as administration officials’ attempts to shape media coverage.
In a January 2021 diary entry, Fauci details how Jeff Zients – Biden’s incoming COVID response co-ordinator – asked him to help dispel a Politico story that Biden was already unhappy with his COVID team. “Jeff is asking a favor for me to go on ‘background’ and tell the reporter that they are doing a very good job,” Fauci wrote. “I told Jeff that I would of course be happy to do this.”
Growing threats
Fauci wrote of threats to his and his family’s security on March 27, 2020: “SECURITY ISSUES – Threats on the ‘dark web’ against me, Chris and the girls. They know everything about us, including where my daughters live and work. Strange people hanging around my house and taking photos of the house.” He said DC police officers were stationed at his house and security agents accompanied him.
“CRAZY PRESS – the fringe far-right crazies are cooking conspiracy theories that I am a Hilary Clinton mole trying to destroy Trump,” he wrote two days later.
As “Trump-Fauci tension” was being built up by the press, Fauci wrote on June 20, 2020, the far right was attacking him more. “Higly tense political situations. I quite frankly do not really care. I will keep doing what I am doing,” he wrote.
In June 2021, he wrote that “the vicious assault on me continues. … The entire extreme right wing republican group in the House and Senate have completely sold their soul to the infinitely lying ex president trump.”
“I must make a point that over the last few weeks more intensively over the last few days I have been stressed beyond the limit particularly compounded by the dark web far right maniacs continuing to attack me in the area of gain of function research, accusations of lying to the Congress under oath, and a variety of other conspiratorial accusations,” he wrote on September 21, 2021.
In some of his last entries, in December 2022, Fauci wrote that he was still “trying to work out my protection post Jan. 1” and that “it is clear … that the far, extreme right and QAnon literally hate me.”
The Washington Post
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