Anthony Fauci's newly released diary is turning into a pretty rough own goal for the republicans who leaked it, because instead of exposing him as some deep state villain, it mostly shows a scientist working the phones, trusting the evidence, and quietly rolling his eyes at donald trump's chaos while trying to keep the country safe.
Senator Rand Paul released more than a thousand pages of Fauci's private notes from 2019 to 2022, and Fauci testifies before Paul's committee this week. Paul has framed the release around the idea that what Fauci wrote privately and what he told the country were two different stories.
Paul's biggest headline claim does not hold up well under scrutiny. He points to a diary entry where Fauci allegedly acknowledged early on that the virus did not originate at the Wuhan wet market, while publicly backing a paper that pointed to natural spillover from that market, and Paul is using the gap to argue Fauci covered for a lab leak.
But the entry Paul is citing actually shows Fauci complaining that conspiracy style letters from members of Congress were an amazing and unbelievable waste of time, which reads like frustration, not confession. A Dartmouth virologist told NPR that scientists being less certain in private than in public is normal, and that solid evidence exists for two separate viral lineages emerging, which actually supports natural spillover.
Paul has also repeatedly alleged, without evidence, that NIAID funded gain of function research in Wuhan caused the pandemic, a claim Fauci denies both publicly and in the supposedly damning private diary itself. If Fauci were really hiding something, you would expect the private version to admit it. Instead it says the same thing as the public one.
What actually comes through in the diary is a guy trying to steer a president who kept wandering off topic. Fauci repeatedly described trump's public comments as rambling, noting at one point that trump would drift into talking about TV ratings while Fauci tried to keep him on track. That is what a competent official sounds like when the man in charge cares more about ratings than case counts.
The timing of this outrage cycle is not an accident either. While cable news spends the week over a diary that mostly makes Fauci look diligent, RFK jr is overseeing the worst measles comeback in a generation. The CDC reported 2,318 measles cases in 2026 alone, more than all of 2025 and far beyond the 283 cases in 2024, with the number still climbing.
Not to mention the ever increasing outbreak of diarrhea lettuce.
So dig through Fauci's diary if you want. What you will mostly find is a professional doing his job under an erratic boss, and a senator whose greatest hits don't survive contact with their own footnotes.
x.com
