Rand Paul Just Exposed What Fauci Really Cared About: The Cameras, Not the Science
His own diary reveals a man obsessed with his celebrity status while the country was told he was only focused on saving lives.
Rand Paul didn’t hold back describing what years of digging through Fauci’s private writings actually revealed. “My investigation uncovered that Anthony Fauci kept a diary,” Paul wrote. “What he wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”
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Paul published the entries from Dec. 2019 through December 2022, and throughout them ran a common thread: he was not only fighting the pandemic but also fighting to maintain his public persona. Why? Because a man who claims to be indifferent to fame spends too much diary space documenting his relationships with the media.
The Diary Reveals an Obsession With Celebrity Access
According to legal scholar Jonathan Turley, who reviewed the same entries that Paul did, there is little doubt about what he found. “The diary revealed an obsession with his publicity and access to celebrities,” Turley wrote. This is not an isolated incident. According to Turley, Fauci referenced CNN anchor Jake Tapper 41 separate times, a staggering amount of references for someone who claimed that the only thing he was concerned about was the science.
Some of these references individually contain enough evidence to support the claim. For example, according to one entry, Fauci stated that Jake Tapper “wanted to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems,” indicating that the supposed independent journalist had made it clear that he was looking out for Fauci’s public image, rather than challenging it. Another entry from July 2020 documented a dinner at Tapper’s house. “Had dinner over Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper’s home in DC. Terrific couple. Friendship building.”
That dinner occurred at a time when Fauci warned the American people against engaging in small household gatherings. CNN later published a report weeks later highlighting the risks associated with small household gatherings, yet its own anchor was reportedly building a friendship with the person giving those warnings.
The Public Line Did Not Match the Private Conduct
Dr. Fauci took pains to tell the American public that he hated being famous. He specifically told Fox News that fame and controversy were “irrelevant” to him, creating a picture of himself as merely a scientist performing his duties regardless of whether or not the American public viewed him favorably.
However, Dr. Fauci’s actions told a different story long before his diary confirmed it. Dr. Fauci participated in a photo shoot for InStyle magazine, where he posed poolside in sunglasses. He appeared on the cover of People magazine, where the outlet referred to him as a “pop icon” and described his interaction with many celebrities, including an interview with actress Julia Roberts. He appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and laughed when Brad Pitt played him on Saturday Night Live.
On The View back in 2021, Meghan McCain summarized the difference between Dr. Fauci’s public and private behavior bluntly. “I don’t think people that are uncomfortable with celebrity, and don’t want to be celebrities, pose on the cover of InStyle magazine, in fashion spreads and on the cover of People magazine,” she said. She then added that “part of the criticism of him going forward was that he clearly wanted to be a Kardashian as well.”
Why This Is Relevant
This is not just an embarrassment about Dr. Fauci’s ego. Paul has been asking a simple question for years that this pattern makes even more relevant now. “Will the left-wing media ever walk back their proclamations of Fauci as a hero?” Paul asked. “Are they embarrassed by their worship of Tony as a god?”
Having a public health official develop friendships with the same journalists covering him, while those journalists supported Dr. Fauci’s messages to the public without any scrutiny of his position, creates a feedback loop that protects Dr. Fauci from being questioned about possible private concerns regarding the origin of the COVID-19 virus several years prior to when the U.S. ultimately learned them.