Anthony Fauci’s diary entries, released by Rand Paul, show the former top US government science adviser turning sharply against Donald Trump as the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic wore on. What began as a late-night call about the coronavirus situation in general became, in Fauci’s own notes, a record of a president he thought was underplaying the danger and turning the crisis into a political problem.
The pages matter now because they were published into a fight that has been building for years. Paul has long attacked Fauci’s Covid-19 leadership, accused him of needlessly shutting down the country and pressed claims that Fauci has rejected, including that the virus was human-made or tied to US-funded research. By releasing the diary entries, Paul appeared to be trying to damage Fauci. Instead, the excerpts document Fauci’s own increasingly harsh view of Trump in real time.
On 27 February 2020, Fauci wrote that Trump called late at night and wanted to chat about the coronavirus situation in general. Fauci said he spoke with him for about 20-25 minutes and urged him not to underplay the seriousness of the situation. He added that he told Trump, from a political standpoint, that his chances for re-election might be more damaged if he downplayed the potential spread of the virus in the USA than if he said serious problems might lie ahead and let the country see he was being honest.
Just days later, Fauci wrote that Trump underplayed the situation anyway. By 14 March 2020, he was noting that Trump wanted 2 press conferences per day, one in the morning and one in the evening. The entries, drawn from the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, read less like polished recollections than a running private account of a relationship that was becoming more strained by the week.
That strain deepened as the year went on. On 22 May 2020, Fauci wrote that Trump was getting out of control in pushing to open up the country and get the economy back before election day, and that the push was all about re-election. In late May, Fauci noted a long conversation on background with Bob Woodward, who was writing a book on the early response to Covid in the USA, and said he had given Woodward some history from early January and into February. Fauci also said he would talk more with him the next day.
By October 2020, Fauci was writing that Trump was on the campaign trail spewing nonsense and was really out of control and a true embarrassment. By March 2021, he had gone further still, saying Trump’s attempt to retain power after electoral defeat reminded him historically of Hitler and calling him truly an obnoxious adolescent. The release of the diaries puts those judgments in sequence, showing not a sudden break but a steady deterioration in Fauci’s view of Trump as the pandemic and its politics collided.
The release also lands against the backdrop of a separate clash. In a January 2022 hearing, Fauci told Paul that the attacks put him in danger. That exchange underscored how personal the dispute had become, and the diary pages now give Paul fresh material but not the verdict he may have wanted. They show Fauci documenting Trump’s behavior as it unfolded, and they leave the larger archive open: how much more of the diary exists beyond the excerpts now made public.
Fauci Diary: Paul releases entries showing Fauci's turn on Trump offers more on the released material.
