"Fauci's diary entry for May 21, 2020 is one of the most grotesque documents you will ever read. It opens with the mounting Covid death toll and people dying across the country, then abruptly pivots into an extended exercise in self-congratulation about his newfound fame. How was someone so profoundly narcissistic ever allowed to accumulate so much power and rise so high? Completely unreal."
A Napoleon Complex
. . . "The size of Fauci’s ego is no surprise to anyone who lived through Covid with his eyes open. He was notorious for doing home interviews with a portrait of himself in the background. He once claimed, “Attacks on me quite frankly are attacks on science.” Here, for good measure, is a Washington Post story with Fauci doing commentary on portraits of himself.
But his diary entries provide new insight into just how inflated Fauci’s self-importance became over the course of the pandemic. The entries are crammed with records of his appearances on corporate media broadcasts and clippings of news stories about, well, himself. “PRESS” is a near daily occurrence, followed by shows that featured the government’s highest-paid official. Though not always related to Fauci’s own media appearances, “CNN” appears 275 times in the diary. “CBS” and “NBC” show up more than 100 times each.
Becoming a go-to pundit for legacy media was clearly important to Fauci, as was getting to rub shoulders with well-known media personalities who increasingly fawned over him. On Feb. 27, 2020, Fauci wrote that it “turned into an amazing day. Chris Cuomo calls me up and says that he wants me on his show …” Two months later, Fauci discussed the lockdowns with Cuomo and wrote that “Chris is being wonderful about saying that the press should not use Fauci as a foil against the POTUS. We need Fauci and we are putting him in a terrible position by pitting him against the POTUS.” A few days later he noted that he was “becoming friends” with both Chris Cuomo and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. On March 11, Fauci described watching a media segment where the “CNN commentators,” including Chris Cuomo and Anderson Cooper, “all discussed me as the adult in the room and the person wew [sic] should all trust.” . . .