{"id":333,"date":"2026-07-27T19:39:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T19:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=333"},"modified":"2026-07-27T19:39:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T19:39:33","slug":"even-fauci-was-shocked-by-how-much-the-media-loved-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=333","title":{"rendered":"Even Fauci Was Shocked by How Much the Media Loved Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at the revelations included in Anthony Fauci\u2019s recently released diary from 2020, and we cover more media misses.<\/p>\n

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Fauci Was Eating Up His \u2018Very Flattering\u2019 Media Coverage in 2020<\/p>\n

Chuck Todd called him \u201cthe single most respected voice on the pandemic.\u201d To Mehdi Hasan, he was \u201cAmerica\u2019s doctor.\u201d Dana Bash went so far as to call him a \u201csuperhero.\u201d<\/p>\n

And now, , we know Anthony Fauci was basking in the positive media coverage, much of which served to obscure the vaunted public health official\u2019s role in pushing harmful lockdown policies and downplaying the likelihood that the virus emerged from a Chinese lab.<\/p>\n

Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.), who seems intent to not let any pandemic-related stone go unturned, released 1,141 pages of Fauci\u2019s diary from 2019 to 2022 on Friday. The near-daily entries feature Fauci obsessively cataloguing and celebrating his newfound media fame, while eagle-eyed readers have been able to retroactively catch Fauci in a number of lies thanks to the unprecedented access the diary provides to his innermost thoughts. Fauci misled Americans on a number of topics, the diary reveals, from Covid-19\u2019s origins to its mortality rate, and his role in shutting down American society in 2020.<\/p>\n

Many of Fauci\u2019s diary entries begin with the death toll of the pandemic, before quickly devolving into a self-satisfied recounting of his adoring media coverage.<\/p>\n

On March 21, 2020, when deaths from the virus reached 9,800 globally, Fauci wrote that a \u201cbig front page article abut [sic] me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable,\u201d he added. \u201cIt is not hyoperbole [sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson [sic] in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCountless profiles on me in multiple media. I cannot even read all the things that are written abuyt [sic] me since I am so busy. . . . seriously,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

He went on to say that President Trump \u201cseems to be enamored of me even though I am taking the spotlight away from him\u201d and that he and the president were \u201cdeveloping a very unique and interesting relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

One day later, he wrote that \u201ccases continue to soar\u201d and the U.S. had recorded 400 deaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cPress is going wild with me,\u201d he wrote. \u201cFront page in Washintgton [sic] Post yesterday and Op Ed by Maureen Dowd in NY Times today about me and my relationship with the POTUS. Profile by Peter Nicholas on me in The Atlantic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am trying in several articles and on TV to clarify that the POTUS is tsalking [sic] about hope for therapies although there are no good data, while I must stick to the science and so fundamentally we are approaching this from different, but not conflicting standpoints,\u201d he added, noting \u201cThe press are crucifying the POTUS for \u2018not listening to me and making crazy statements about \u2018game-changing\u2019 therapies and praising me fot stivking [sic] to my guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

He goes on to say watching a press conference the president held \u201cmade it clear how self-congratulatory the POTUS, VP and others appear on the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fauci clipped a number of newspaper headlines throughout his diary entries, from the Washington Post <\/em>in August 2020, \u201cAs Fauci battles the pandemic and politics, his grateful neighbors celebrate him as a hero,\u201d to a March 2020 article in the New York Times<\/em>, \u201cNot His First Pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci Sticks to the Facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fauci\u2019s diary entries also reveal an increasingly cozy relationship with broadcast journalists, including NBC\u2019s Chuck Todd and CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper.<\/p>\n

He writes about a \u201creally nice conversation with Chuck Todd\u201d that began when Todd texted to ask about what he thought of an interview the day before. Fauci went on to ask Todd for advice about \u201cpublicly defending myself\u201d against \u201cslanderous attacks.\u201d The pair agreed that any defense Fauci might mount would only fuel his critics. Fauci said Todd told him \u201cthat Fox News and people like Tucker Carlson would use anything I say as the theme for their next show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough he must maintain his objectivity and reporting it is very clear that he is really being a friend in understanding the difficult position that I am in,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Fauci\u2019s diary also mentions a budding friendship with Tapper, who at one point checked in with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases leader to ensure a CNN interview hadn\u2019t caused problems with the White House.<\/p>\n

Fauci also sent questions to Tapper for the CNN anchor\u2019s interview with Trump\u2019s assistant secretary of health at the time, shortly after Fauci visited the Tapper home for dinner and assessed that the pair had a \u201cfriendship building.\u201d<\/p>\n

CNN\u2019s Dana Bash also privately texted Fauci at one point in response to a heated exchange he had with Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) in April 2021. Bash told Fauci he was a \u201cbetter man\u201d and said her colleague Wolf Blitzer had joked no one would have blamed Fauci if he had told Jordan to \u201cgo f*** yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Fauci was developing close ties to members of the mainstream media behind the scenes perhaps comes as no surprise, given how little broadcast anchors tried to hide their admiration for Fauci on screen.<\/p>\n

In response to a video compilation by Grabien showing news anchors\u2019 overly deferential attitudes toward Fauci, former Trump White House staffer Alexa Henning said Fauci was \u201cimpossible to get off tv\u201d at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s an egomaniac, obsessed with attention,\u201d said Henning, who served as special assistant to the president and director of broadcast media during President Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe used to tell hosts directly that I was keeping him off tv and I\u2019d get calls from Chris Cuomo and others yelling at me that I was endangering the lives of the American people if I didn\u2019t let Fauci on tv,\u201d she wrote. \u201cAnother time I recall a conversation we had where I said it maybe it wasn\u2019t a good idea to go on SNL, he looked at me and said \u2018SNL!? Who do you think will play me? Brad Pitt?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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But despite Fauci\u2019s public-facing role as a Covid hero \u2014 and the anchors\u2019 repeated insistence on thanking him for his \u201ccandor\u201d \u2014 the diary also reveals that Fauci\u2019s public and private thoughts on the pandemic\u2019s origins greatly diverged.<\/p>\n

On January 26, 2020, Fauci wrote, \u201cIt now appears using epi data and genomic data that the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,\u201d he said. \u201cHaving said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.\u201d<\/p>\n

NR\u2019s Jim Geraghty acknowledged that he couldn\u2019t find an instance in which Fauci explicitly states that SARS-CoV-2 came from a wet market, but he \u201ccertainly didn\u2019t do anything to dispel that perception.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, Fauci emphasized the likelihood of a \u201cnatural origin\u201d and rejected the notion that the virus could have leaked from a lab.<\/p>\n

The public has known for years now that Fauci \u201cprompted\u201d \u201cThe Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,\u201d a paper published in Nature Medicine <\/em>in March 2020 that would go on to be widely cited by the journalists and public health officials who roundly dismissed the idea that Covid-19 had emerged from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.<\/p>\n

But recent document dumps by Paul\u2019s office show Fauci and other scientists, including those who authored the papers, were privately casting doubts about a natural origin for the virus.<\/p>\n

Fauci\u2019s diary details his February 1, 2020, call with a dozen scientists that ultimately led to the \u201cProximal Origin\u201d paper. He reveals in his writings that just two of the scientists thought the virus had natural origins; the other ten \u201cfelt that deliberate insertion was possible,\u201d Fauci wrote.<\/p>\n

Not only that, but the scientists pointed to the gain-of-function studies on coronaviruses in Wuhan as a particular point of concern.<\/p>\n

And yet, eight days after the call, Fauci went on Newt Gingrich\u2019s podcast and dismissed a lab leak as \u201cjust conspiracy theories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slack messages released by Paul\u2019s office earlier last week showed the scientists behind the \u201cProximal Origins\u201d paper began having doubts just three months after publishing their paper, which claimed that the Covid lab-leak theory was not \u201cplausible.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked publicly in April 2020 whether Covid-19 may have emerged from a lab, Fauci cited the paper to cast doubt on the theory.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in a diary entry from March 15, 2020, Fauci recalls convincing then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and California Governor Gavin Newsom to close schools, bars and restaurants. And yet two years later, Fauci told The Hill <\/em>he \u201cdidn\u2019t recommend locking anything down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fauci also testified before Congress on March 11, 2020, that the mortality rate of Covid was between 1 and 3 percent, or that Covid-19 was ten times more lethal than the seasonal flu.<\/p>\n

But one month before his testimony, Fauci wrote in his diary about a conversation he had with former CDC director Tom Frieden in which they both agreed that the case fatality rate was \u201cmore like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%.\u201d<\/p>\n

Headline Fail of the Week<\/p>\n

USA Today<\/em> sports columnist Nancy Armour was widely panned online last week for invoking Emmett Till in an essay criticizing women\u2019s basketball phenom Caitlin Clark.<\/p>\n

\u201cCaitlin Clark\u2019s flopping isn\u2019t just annoying \u2014 it\u2019s becoming dangerous,\u201d Armour wrote, arguing that Clark\u2019s \u201chistrionics\u201d while accusing other players of foul play endangers black and queer players.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems there is a White nationalist element to Clark\u2019s fandom that is deeply, deeply problematic,\u201d Armour said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t need reminding this country has an awful history of Black people being harmed, even killed, in the name of \u2018defending\u2019 white women,\u201d she later added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe irony of the WNBA\u2019s All-Star Game is that it\u2019s happening this weekend in Chicago, the hometown of Emmett Till,\u201d she said, referring to the 14-year-old black boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.<\/p>\n

In response to backlash, Armour acknowledged that her comparison to Emmett Till was \u201cinartful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my recent column, I made an inartful comparison with the murder of Emmett Till,\u201d she posted in a statement on Instagram. \u201cI intended to connect the issues the WNBA is currently facing with its All-Star Game being hosted in Till\u2019s hometown of Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI obviously did not provide enough context for that. However, this point stands: There is a history in this country of perceived threats to white women being weaponized against African-Americans, and the danger that poses to Black players in the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more How Cuba Is Covertly Boosting America\u2019s Radical Left<\/a><\/p>\n

Media Misses<\/p>\n