For years, Dr. Anthony Fauci kept a private electronic diary chronicling his experience as the nation’s top infectious disease official during the COVID-19 pandemic. That diary is private no more. Sen. Rand Paul obtained the journal through a subpoena and released it publicly — and its pages reveal, in blunt terms, exactly what Fauci thought of President Donald Trump.
Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly four decades, became one of the most recognizable figures in America during the pandemic — praised by supporters as a steady voice of science and attacked by opponents as a symbol of government overreach. His diary offers a rare, unguarded look at how he processed that pressure day to day, away from the cameras and the podium.
What the Diary Says
The entries pull no punches. When Trump publicly embraced QAnon-linked conspiracy theories tied to the virus, Fauci recorded his reaction in three words: “What an idiot!!” In a separate entry dated October 15, 2020 — as the president openly contradicted his own scientists in the middle of a deadly surge — Fauci wrote that Trump was “a true embarrassment.”
Both phrases appear verbatim in Fauci’s own handwriting, according to the released material. They capture a moment when the working relationship between the White House and its most prominent health adviser had frayed almost beyond repair, with the two men frequently at odds in public over masks, treatments and the severity of the outbreak.
Subpoenaed, Not Leaked
An important distinction sits at the center of this story: the diary was not leaked by an anonymous insider. It was obtained through a formal congressional subpoena and then released by Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has clashed repeatedly with Fauci over the origins of the virus and the government’s pandemic response.
The journal spans December 2019 through December 2022 — the entire arc of the pandemic, from the first reports of a mysterious illness to the long tail of the recovery. Paul released it ahead of Fauci’s scheduled testimony, framing the entries as a window into the private judgment of a man who spent years as the public face of the federal COVID effort.
The Reaction
Supporters of Fauci argue the diary only confirms what millions of Americans watched unfold in real time: a career scientist growing more and more alarmed as the White House sidelined data in favor of politics. To them, the private frustration reads as the honest record of an expert who kept warning about a crisis while being undercut from above.
Critics see it differently. They contend that a senior public health official had no business privately grading the president he served, and that the candid insults undercut Fauci’s repeated insistence that he was above the political fray. For Paul and his allies, the entries are evidence of exactly the bias they long suspected.
What This Means for Americans
Beyond the personal drama, the release raises real questions about transparency and trust. Americans lived through the pandemic taking guidance from both the White House and Fauci’s team, often as those two sources publicly contradicted each other. The diary makes plain just how deep that division ran behind closed doors — and how much of the tension between science and politics was hidden from the public at the time.
Now the words are on the record in Fauci’s own hand, and the debate they reignite is not really about two insults. It is about who was right when the stakes were highest, and whether the people making life-and-death decisions were being straight with the country. The question everyone is arguing over is a simple one: was he wrong?
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