Dr. Anthony Fauci’s COVID diaries may have painted him as a vain, power-mad, clout-chasing apparatchik who mismanaged the crisis spectacularly and lied about it at every available opportunity.
If it can be believed, however, the people behind the scenes during this period say that he was even worse than he painted himself as being.
In a piece published in the Daily Mail earlier this week, former officials that worked with the man called him “truly a maniac,” “very aloof early on, very condescending,” and a man who didn’t like it when the media “asked him tough questions and asked him to show his work.”
Golly. And here I was reliably informed this man represented science.
Granted, I was informed by Anthony Fauci, who literally said “I represent science,” but we were all told that this guy was the only reliable adult in the room when it came to COVID.
His diary, discovered by government computers and reproduced in part in teenage-girl form by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, showed this clearly wasn’t the case:
And if “Tony’s Diary” in pink cursive font seems a bit on the nose, it was apparently worse from those who knew the man who became the chief medical adviser during COVID.
From the open of the Daily Mail’s piece:
As the world wrestled with fears of coronavirus pandemic, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr Anthony Fauci pulled a White House communications staffer aside to make an unusual request.
The NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, he said, wanted to have him appear on the show as they prepared to kick off a new season.
The staffer replied that it might look bad for Fauci to be doing comedy sketches on television when Americans were dying from the coronavirus.
Fauci replied that actor Brad Pitt would be playing him on the show, emphasizing the importance of a possible appearance to communicate public health messaging.
Yes, that’s right — the man was concerned about “SNL,” proof that not only was he a clout-chaser but one stuck back in the 1990s, when this stuff mattered. Surprised he didn’t suggest a Will Smith rap parody called “Gettin’ Masky Wit’ It” for the show.
The people who worked with him suggested that this was about who they were dealing with.
One source, anonymous, who worked in the Trump administration: “Fauci was truly a maniac… He was like fan-girling all over himself.”
Another, commenting on his demands to appear on TV more: A “media diva.”
But he was choosy. Former White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley: “Now in the diary, we see literally behind the mask,” Gidley said. “He didn’t like Fox News but he loved CNN… People like Laura Ingraham and others, he didn’t want to go on there because they asked him tough questions and asked him to show his work and he didn’t want to show his work.”
Former White House Deputy Press Secretary Alexa Henning, whom he described in the diaries as a “mole who does not like me,” said that he “clearly he wasn’t a fan of mine.”
Same as anyone who kept him away from the spotlight, as his diary entries show.
“Despite my being kept out of the press by the Whit[e] House COMMS [communications] people, the media blitz about me continues strong, as well as the gimmick stuff like underwear (bikini) with either my name on the front or Govs. Cuomo or Newsom,” Fauci wrote on May 19, 2020.
He was also a fan of the other Cuomo, Fredo — I mean, er, Chris.
“He wanted to go on Cuomo every night,” one White House press staffer said.
“Clearly, they do not want me on Major TV, but are afraid to admit it,” Fauci said in an October 2020 diary entry. “This must be pointed out in the book!”
C-SPAN is “Major TV,” doctor! Surely you have something to say besides asserting your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for acts you insist weren’t criminal and you’ve already received a pardon for anyway?
No, of course not. This is who Anthony Fauci is. Read the diaries and he’s bad. Talk to the people who know him and he’s worse. Try to get him to talk about all of this and he’ll stonewall. This would be a funny and sad conclusion to COVID, were it not for the damage this egomaniac visited upon the most vulnerable people in America.
