President Trump sharply criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary entries in an interview with “Fox & Friends.”
“When he was with Biden, he was like the God. When he was with me, he wasn’t even close,” he said. “I didn’t agree with what he was saying or what he was doing.”
“He started off saying, ‘Don’t wear them.’ Then he said, ‘Wear them.’ Then he said, ‘Don’t wear them.’ And I lost a lot of respect for him during the period of time,” Trump said. “I said, ‘What are you doing?’”
He went on to blame Fauci for the widespread lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. “He wanted everything closed. It just turned out that closing wasn’t so good,” he said. “Some of the states that fared the worst in terms of the spread were actually closed. OK, explain that. Nobody can explain that.”
Fauci’s diary entries referenced his working relationship with President Trump. “Anthony, you are really a famous guy,” he quotes Trump as saying. A separate entry says that Trump told First Lady Melania Trump that Fauci was “the smartest person in the world.”
Interestingly, Fauci’s entries focused on his perceived fame and status from the media attention he received at the height of the pandemic. He wrote, “Big front page article abut me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering. The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyoperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable [person] in the world. Countless profiles on me in multiple media. I cannot even read all the things that are written [about] me since I am so busy….seriously. POTUS seems to be enamored of me even though I am taking the spotlight away from him.”
