The copy of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary released this week shows the former White House COVID advisor fixating over the press, mentioning Wyoming's low vaccinations rates and praising former Rep. U.S. Liz Cheney for what Fauci called her courage in opposing the president.
U.S. Sen Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, released the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director’s diary over the weekend in anticipation of a Wednesday hearing.
Fauci alternated fluidly between documenting death tolls and the “hot and heavy” coverage with which the press swarmed him. He documented his media features, interviews and appearances almost daily for months.
“The Fauci cult continues,” wrote Fauci in reference to August media reports.
Wyoming
Wyoming features in the diary twice.
An April 10, 2020, entry documents calls with governors seeking Fauci’s guidance and to air their concern about the devastating economic fallout: “17 million jobs lost within the past 4 weeks.”
Even the massive infusion of federal relief dollars couldn’t spare the states, and some red-state governors urged counsel on how to get their people back to work safely, the entry says.
“Call with Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming – same discussion,” wrote Fauci. “What advice and counsel of returning to normal.”
“All these Governors are calling me because of my credibility and reputation to run their plans by me and ask for my opinion and help … message back to (the task force and president,” the director added.
A July 4, 2021, entry says Wyoming and other states had COVID surges due to lower vaccination rates.
Liz Cheney
Former U.S. House Rep. Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, appear multiple times in the diary.
Republicans and conservative news commentators started “blasting” Fauci for his shutdown policies on about May 13, 2020. So did Paul, in a May 12 Senate hearing.
Julia Roberts mooned over Fauci that same week, the diary says.
“Dick Cheney called me to thank me for what I was doing and to say that he fully supported me,” wrote Fauci. “I acknowledged and thanked him and his daughter Liz for sticking up for me after the Senate Hearing yesterday.”
The former vice president was “muted in his criticism of Trump,” Fauci continued. “But he did agree that Trump was living in an alternative universe.”
Fauci wrote three days later that he told Vice President Mike Pence of how Cheney had called him into the White House 19 years prior to discuss the anthrax attacks.
On Aug. 4, 2021, Dick Cheney called again, the diary says.
Cheney had had a heart transplant years prior and was on an immunosuppressive regimen, wrote Fauci.
“It is likely that his immune response two (sic) the vaccine is suboptimal.”
Cheney’s cardiologist recommended the former vice president call Fauci, the diary says.
“I made it very clear to Cheney that I strongly recommended he get the third boost of the mRNA since he is highly susceptible to getting infected if he comes into contact with an infected person,” Fauci wrote.
He added that they discussed “the courage of his daughter Liz Cheney and sticking up against the far right Republicans who want to whitewash the January 6th insurrection.”
Fauci voiced his appreciation “that she has been sticking up for me,” says the entry.
What Wyoming's Pendley Remembers
The diary also stunned a former Trump department head, who contrasted Fauci’s apparent fixation with media attention with the “traumatic” efforts others undertook to address COVID19.
William Perry Pendley, a Wyomingite who then led Trump’s U.S. Bureau of Land Management, criticized Fauci in a Monday post to X and a Tuesday interview with Cowboy State Daily.
“What struck me, and struck a lot of people on X, was just the contrast,” Pendley told Cowboy State Daily, “That while he’s getting over his celebrity status, hundreds of people at the Department of Interior are taking this very, very seriously, and regarding it as something from the White House saying this is a life-and-death matter. This is a national crisis.”
Pendley said with preparation, duration and follow-up directives, the meetings consumed two to three hours of each day. Interior leadership worried about the health of the roughly 70,000 employees under their umbrella, he said.
“While Fauci basked in the media's attention, I ran Trump's BLM & was on daily Zoom calls with Interior's number two official with scores of others,” wrote Pendley on X. “Untold hours by hundreds of employees were needed to prepare for & follow up on those needlessly traumatic meetings. Shame on him.”
Fauci’s diary also features his numerous concerns about deaths and sickness.
But first, Fauci opined in a Feb. 8, 2020, phone call that the virus was “acting like a bad influenza” and showed a case fatality rate of 0.2%-0.3%, his diary says.
The messaging was, “You’ve got to devote all your energy and skills to addressing this,” added Pendley in his interview.
The ‘Hot And Heavy’ Press
Entanglements and preoccupations with “press” that permeate nearly every entry.
“Press still hot and heavy about me,” says an April 7, 2020 entry. “Multiple stories per day directly or indirectly involving me.”
He documented the Fauci cartoons, Fauci underwear and other merchandise, news and book interviews, and the false claims and conspiracy theories about him that surfaced starting in 2020.
From about May through July 2020, Fauci documented numerous instances of complaining to White House personnel that he wasn’t placed in enough interviews, the diary shows.
Fauci also claimed embarrassment at receiving hugs and kisses from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and at President Donald Trump touting Fauci’s intelligence to First Lady Melania.
And he lamented where, according to him, the press got the story wrong in its fervor to pit him as a “foil” against Trump.
Mainstream media and columnists elevated Fauci for his calm demeanor and his willingness to contradict Trump starting in spring of 2020. Fauci had pushed for longer business and school closures, while Trump urged the director, who was part of the White House’s COVID19 task force, to find a way to reopen the nation by Easter.
“Continued crazy stuff: Petition to name me ‘Sexiest Man Alive,’” says an April 1, 2020 entry. “Videos (sic) games named after me; Fauci Bobblehead; dishes in redstaurants (sic) named after me, and on and on.”
In that same entry Fauci documented a “good conversation” with Bill Gates regarding the advanced development and scaleup of vaccines.
That later contrasted with what Fauci called White House response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx’s unfavorable view toward mRNA vaccines. Fauci cast her discomfort as a prejudice.
Celebrities, Vaccines, And The Red States Reopening
An April 29, 2020, entry details a Zoom call between Fauci and a “whole list of celebrities,” organized by Kim Kardashian.
That list featured Kate Hudson, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Chris Rock, Scooter Braun, Josh Gad, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, Kendall Jenner, Ariana Grande, Paula Abdul, Demi Lovato, and Michael Jordan – to name a few.
Fauci noted the USA COVID case tally at 3 million that day and the death toll at 203,000.
Fauci urged repeatedly against letting the states “reopen” but when several did in mid-May, the virologist noted an interesting development.
“What is evolving is that states that are opening thus far are not seeing an increase in cases,” says a May 17, 2020, entry. “In fact, some are seeing decreases. We need another couple of weeks to se (sic) what is happening. Interesting that they might be paying attention more to mask use and social distancing as they open.”
But acute outbreaks still hit nursing homes, prisons, meatpacking plants and industries where workers lived in dormitory-like quarters, he wrote.
“This is easily recognizable and quickly contained,” he wrote.
A June 25, 2020 entry says, “Contact tracing does not work.” He called contact tracing an abject failure.
He cast the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as incompetent – repeatedly across multiple entries.
He described an at-times affectionate, at-times icy relationship with Trump, almost always worsened by the press’s fervor in making Fauci a calm and well-informed anti-Trump figure.
A Feb. 12, 2020, entry has Fauci writing that World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus “depends greatly on China and often bows to them.”
Officials were at that time developing a WHO working group that lacked representation from China, Fauci wrote.
He detailed his friendship with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and helpful messaging by the latter’s news-commentator brother Chris Cuomo.
By March 29, the “CRAZY PRESS” wave had turned political, the diary says.
“The fringe far-right crazies are cooking conspiracy theories that I am a Hilary Clinton mole trying to destroy Trump,” says the entry. But at that time, “Trump continues to become more and more enamored of me.”
One media disaster culminated in Trump saying “his right wing base is causing a lot of trouble,” says an April 13, 2020, entry.
Regarding the vaccine development, a May 17, 2020, entry says “We are well into the process and I just do not want any person or organization or structure to get in my way.”
A June 15, 2020, entry questions why a Chinese study group had a mouse model of SARS-CoV-2 infection as early as August 2019.
“Why would they be doing that last summer??? They could have been studying SARS, but they already had mouse models,” says the entry. “Possible they just wanted to use a better technique… OR they knew that SARS-CoV-2 already existed and the outbreak was already ongoing.”
Regarding the dramatic press saga of Fauci vs. Trump, the entry says, “Most people (sic) expressing outrage that the trump administration woud (sic) be so bumbling and incompetent to try to discredit the most credible scientist in the world.”
Rand Paul’s Focus
In a “Tony’s Diary” cover page set in pink cursive font – like a teen girl’s diary – along with other mocking insignia, Paul detailed places where Fauci’s diary contradicts his public messaging.
When other professionals swapped theories about the virus’ origins in January 2020, Paul noted from the diary, the doctors had a sincere debate about whether the virus had natural or lab-leak origins.
“Before most Americans knew there was an origins debate, the government’s top infectious disease official was already confronting the lab scenario,” wrote Paul.
Paul has long said the virus originated in a lab leak.
Fauci dismissed that theory publicly in 2020 in 2021 with the claim his critics “are really criticizing science because I represent science.” The lab leak theory has since garnered credibility.
“The fact that the lab in question had received a 2014 grant (through an intermediary) from NIAID for ‘gain of function’ research may help explain Fauci’s reluctance to come clean about the need to investigate,” opined the editors of The Free Press in a Monday editorial.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
