Dr. Anthony Fauci was tracking more than COVID cases in the early months of the pandemic.
He was also tracking his own celebrity.
Newly released diary entries from the former White House COVID adviser show Fauci repeatedly writing about his rising fame as the virus tore through the country, Americans were locked down and the death toll climbed.
The journals were released by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a longtime Fauci critic who is now chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Paul released the entries just days before Fauci is scheduled to testify before the panel after being subpoenaed.
As early as April 2020, with more than 60,000 Americans already dead from COVID, Fauci was writing about the press frenzy surrounding him.
“Press still hot and heavy about me. Multiple stories per day directly or indirectly involving me,” Fauci wrote in an entry dated April 7, 2020, amid intensifying media coverage around the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
By May 21, 2020, with nearly 98,000 Americans dead, Fauci wrote that his “national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable,” adding it was “not hyperbole” to describe the scale of his global recognition, according to the diary.
In late June 2020, as U.S. daily COVID cases reached a record 40,000 in a single day, Fauci also noted that he had received an invitation to appear on TV’s “Dancing with the Stars.”
🚨 NOW: Dr. Fauci is about to be forced to testify after his private DIARY ENTRIES were released showing how much he bragged to himself behind the scenes in manipulating the public and getting favorable press coverage for it
Fauci MUST FACE JUSTICE, NOT JUST HEARINGS! pic.twitter.com/gudnRlU1Kf
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 27, 2026
The entries paint an unflattering picture for conservatives who have long accused Fauci of becoming the face of a public health regime that shut down schools, crushed small businesses, policed churches and lectured Americans while enjoying glowing media coverage.
Fauci also wrote about growing tension with the Trump White House, saying “countless” media profiles and his increased public presence were turning him into “a star that outshines” the president.
He later insisted he had “no desire to conflict with, embarrass or show up the POTUS” when he decided to stop taking part in profile interviews.
The diaries also show Fauci reflecting on how familiar he had become around the White House, writing that Secret Service officers stationed at the gates routinely waved his vehicle through security checkpoints without asking to inspect his identification.
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To Paul and other critics, the entries are not just embarrassing.
They are evidence of a public health official who became consumed by image, access and media adulation while Americans were watching loved ones die, children fall behind and businesses disappear.
Paul has clashed with Fauci for years over COVID restrictions, federal pandemic policies and questions surrounding the virus’ origins.
His release of the diaries comes ahead of Fauci’s scheduled testimony before the Senate panel.
“Anthony Fauci will answer to the American people,” Paul said in an X post June 28 ahead of the diary entries’ release, as he accused federal health leadership of focusing on self-promotion and misdirecting public scrutiny in the early months of the pandemic.
The Kentucky Republican is expected to press Fauci over the federal COVID response, the origins of the virus and U.S.-funded research tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for decades, became one of the most polarizing figures in America during the pandemic.
To liberals, he was a calm scientific voice in a crisis.
To conservatives, he became the symbol of an arrogant bureaucracy that demanded obedience, dismissed dissent and moved the goalposts while ordinary Americans paid the price.
Trump senior adviser Peter Navarro has taken the criticism even further.
Navarro branded Fauci the “Dr. Frankenstein of the modern era,” accusing him of having “the blood of millions of people on his hands, during an interview with Fox Business on June 25.
“You idiot! … You need to come clean, Fauci,” Navarro said.
Fauci did not respond to requests for comment.
The diary entries land at a brutal time for Fauci.
Years after lockdowns, mandates, school closures and social-media censorship campaigns were defended in the name of “science,” the public is still learning what top officials were saying and thinking behind the scenes.
And in Fauci’s own words, while Americans were counting deaths, he was counting headlines.
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