Fauci Journals Reveal He Reveled in 'Public Adulation'

Some of Anthony Fauci's private thoughts during the pandemic are now public—and they show a health official preoccupied with the virus, his own role in front of the cameras, and his friction with President Trump over how to handle things, reports the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Sen. Rand Paul, a longtime critic of Fauci, released more than 1,000 pages from Fauci's private journals, ahead of the doctor's Wednesday appearance before Paul's Senate committee. It's not clear how Paul obtained the typewritten journals, but it's possible they were written on a work computer, notes the New York Times. The full release is here. Some highlights:

• "The public adulation of me has been amazing with every young intern as well as seasoned veteran in the WH coming over to me congratulating me and thanking me for my work and even asking for selfies," he wrote in March 2020, after achieving the "Fauci 5"—appearances on all five major Sunday morning news shows.
• "It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable" in the world, he wrote after what he described as a "very flattering" front-page story in the Washington Post.
• He recounted a conversation with Trump in November 2020: "Tony, I really like you, and you know that, but what the f— are you doing?" he quoted Trump as telling him. "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."
• Earlier that year, he complained of a Trump news conference on the outbreak. "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." A description of a March 2020 meeting: "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)."
• The first infection surfaced in China in December 2019, and the following month, Fauci was pondering the source. "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," he wrote, referring to a market with live animals in Wuhan, China. "Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier." Paul is investigating whether the virus might have leaked from a lab, a notion Fauci dismissed as a "conspiracy theory." The Times notes the journals have no "smoking gun" for Paul on this front. At one point, Fauci wrote that "somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans."