Fauci enjoyed being famous

Fauci's COVID diaries show obsession with celebrity status while Americans died by the thousands

Sen. Rand Paul released Dr. Anthony Fauci's personal diary entries from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pages read less like a public-health chronicle than a Hollywood vanity journal.

Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who served as chief medical advisor to Presidents Trump and Biden, kept a running account of his daily life during the crisis, and the entries Paul's Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee made public reveal a man remarkably absorbed with his own fame even as the national death toll climbed into the tens of thousands.

The Kentucky Republican, who chairs the committee and has long clashed with Fauci over the federal pandemic response and the origins of the virus, released the diary package days before Fauci is scheduled to appear under subpoena for Senate testimony.

The timing is deliberate. Paul wants the public to read Fauci's own words before Fauci takes the oath.

Fauci wrote that his national and international fame was "explosive and really unimaginable." He called it "not hyperbole" that he was "the most famous and talked about person in the country." He described "countless" profiles written about him, some, he noted, without anyone even interviewing him, as Fox News reported.

That is not a man focused on stopping a pandemic. That is a man keeping score.

Read about Dr. Fauci