Senate Homeland Security Chairman Rand Paul released Dr. Anthony Fauci's personal diary entries ahead of the former COVID adviser's subpoenaed testimony, and the pages read less like a public-health chronicle than a fame ledger.
While hundreds of thousands of Americans struggled through the deadliest months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci was tracking his own media coverage, cataloging calls from Hollywood A-listers, dining at CNN anchors' homes, and marveling at the scale of his own celebrity. That is the portrait that emerges from diary entries released by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, days before Fauci is scheduled to appear under subpoena.
The entries span the pandemic years and close with a scene at the 2022 Kennedy Center Honors. They feature President Donald Trump, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, multiple CNN personalities, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, actress Julia Roberts, and Hunter Biden, among others. Taken together, the diary does not read like the private notes of a man shouldering a national crisis. It reads like the journal of a man savoring one.
The diary's most damning passages land in the spring and early summer of 2020, when American hospitals were overwhelmed and families were barred from visiting dying relatives. On April 7, 2020, by which point more than 60,000 Americans had already died of COVID-19, Fauci sat down and wrote about himself.
The New York Post reported the entry in full:
"Press still hot and heavy about me. Multiple stories per day directly or indirectly involving me."
Six weeks later, on May 21, 2020, with nearly 98,000 Americans dead, Fauci's self-assessment grew even grander. He described his "national and international fame" as "explosive and really unimaginable," Newsmax reported.
There is no entry in the released diary pages, at least none reported, in which Fauci pauses to reckon with the death toll itself. The diary tracks his profile, not the body count.
The entries paint a picture of Fauci's relationship with CNN that goes well beyond the standard source-reporter dynamic. Jake Tapper appears repeatedly. Fauci documented phone calls, text exchanges, and dinners at the Tapper family's Washington home. After one CNN interview, Tapper privately checked in to make sure the appearance had not caused Fauci trouble with the White House.
That kind of solicitous back-channel is revealing on its own. But the diary's account of Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer goes further.
After a heated exchange between Fauci and Rep. Jim Jordan during a congressional hearing, Bash texted Fauci to tell him he was "a better man." The following day, she texted again, pointing him to a Vanity Fair headline that mocked Jordan's performance. Blitzer, relayed through Bash, joked that no one would have blamed Fauci if he had told Jordan to "go f*** yourself."
These are not journalists covering a public official. These are allies cheering from the sidelines and sharing opposition research. The diary entries, written by Fauci himself, make the relationship plain, and none of the named CNN personalities have publicly responded to the release. The pattern recalls the kind of internal political dynamics that shape how Washington insiders protect their own.
The diary also documents a running internal war over Fauci's media appearances. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows threatened to keep Fauci off television and repeatedly pushed him to soften his public messaging. In one entry, Fauci described Meadows as "screaming" over comments Fauci had made publicly.
A May 2020 entry recounts a conversation with then-White House communications director Alyssa Farah. Fauci wrote that Farah admitted White House staff had been "holding me back," said the situation had "gotten out of hand," and promised to begin clearing his television requests again. Fauci cast Farah as an ally in his fight to stay in front of cameras.
By July 2, 2020, Fauci's frustration with the people blocking his TV time had turned personal. He called then-HHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Michael Caputo "a con man who is completely full of sh**," writing that Caputo publicly claimed to support his media appearances while privately blocking them.
The picture that forms is not one of a scientist reluctantly dragged into the spotlight. It is a man who viewed television access as a right and treated anyone who limited it as an enemy.
The celebrity entries are, in their own way, just as telling. Julia Roberts hosted Fauci on Instagram Live, sent him flowers, and later presented him with an award. Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor, makes an appearance. So do comedian Trevor Noah, NBA star Steph Curry, actors Sean Penn and Matt Damon, and rapper Lil Wayne.
Fauci described Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, whose company was discussed in the context of White House efforts to deploy Oracle technology during the pandemic, as "a bit of a loose cannon." The diary does not elaborate on what prompted that assessment.
The celebrity parade raises a straightforward question: how much time did the nation's top infectious disease expert spend cultivating famous admirers while Americans waited for clear guidance on masks, treatments, and school reopenings? The diary does not answer that directly, but the sheer volume of boldface names suggests the answer is "more than zero." Amid the political maneuvering in Washington, where GOP leaders have faced their own accountability questions, Fauci's diary stands apart for its unguarded self-regard.
The diary closes with an entry about the 2022 Kennedy Center Honors, where Fauci encountered Hunter Biden. Fauci wrote that Biden hugged him and joked that the internet "would explode" if someone photographed them together because they were both "being attacked by the far right GOP."
The moment is minor in isolation. But it captures something larger about the world Fauci inhabited by 2022, a world in which he and the president's son shared a laugh about their critics, at a black-tie gala, while millions of Americans still lived with the consequences of pandemic-era decisions Fauci helped shape. The kind of embarrassing personal revelations that surface in Washington often reveal more about character than any prepared testimony ever could.
Sen. Paul released the diary entries ahead of Fauci's scheduled appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Fauci was subpoenaed to testify, and Paul has made clear he intends the hearing to cover the origins of COVID-19 itself, not just Fauci's extracurricular social calendar.
"Anthony Fauci will answer to the American people," Paul wrote in a June 28 post on X.
The diary release appears designed to frame that testimony. By putting Fauci's own words into the public record before he takes the oath, Paul has given senators, and the public, a lens through which to evaluate whatever Fauci says under questioning. The full scope of the diary, including how many entries it contains and what date range it covers, has not been publicly detailed. A PDF of the released package is hosted on Paul's Senate website.
Several open questions remain. Neither Fauci nor his representatives have publicly responded to the diary release. None of the CNN anchors named in the entries, Tapper, Bash, or Blitzer, have commented. Caputo, Farah, and Meadows have not weighed in. The silence, for now, belongs to everyone except the man who wrote it all down. As Republican figures continue to make headlines in Washington, Fauci's diary may prove to be the most politically damaging document he ever produced, and he wrote every word of it himself.
When the nation's top doctor spent a plague journaling about his own fame, the problem was never the virus. It was the man who forgot he was supposed to be fighting it.
