Fauci's Diary Called Trump 'Truly an Obnoxious Adolescent' and Six Other Things

The Hearing Rand Paul Has Been Dreaming About

Rand Paul has been chasing Anthony Fauci like a golden retriever after a tennis ball for several years now. Wednesday's hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is the culmination of a "longtime Republican investigation into the origins of the pandemic," as The Guardian describes it — an investigation that scientists have characterized as "vilification and harassment" of a man who ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years.

Paul, who chairs that committee, framed his crusade in the language of aggrieved taxpayers last week: "For years, Americans were told a lab origin wasn't just unlikely — it was dismissed outright by the very people funding and reviewing this research." That's a clean political line. What it isn't is a clean scientific one.

What the Science Actually Says

Here's the thing about the lab leak theory: it has gained enormous political traction while losing scientific ground. A 2024 survey of virologists from the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, as The Guardian reports, found that most believed COVID-19 began as a spillover event — a virus jumping from an infected animal to a human. A separate group of virologists argued in the Journal of Virology that the "preponderance" of evidence points to exactly that conclusion.

That hasn't stopped the theory from becoming foundational Republican doctrine. The White House published a full treatise on the lab leak theory in April 2025 — not as a topic for further study, but as justification for defunding the National Institutes of Health. You read that right. A contested origin theory, rejected by most virologists, was used to gut the federal agency responsible for medical research. Cool system we've got here.

Fauci himself served under seven US presidents, shepherded the country through the HIV crisis, multiple Ebola outbreaks, and the original SARS coronavirus before COVID-19 even existed. He retired in 2022. The idea that dragging an 85-year-old back to Washington is a serious scientific inquiry rather than political theater requires a very generous interpretation of the word 'serious.'

The 1,100-Page 'Diary' and Its Most Interesting Entries

Paul dropped the diary release just before the hearing — timing that could charitably be called strategic and less charitably called a stunt. The document runs over 1,100 pages and, according to The Guardian, contains Fauci's working-through of his scientific thinking about COVID origins. Scientists have said this is completely normal — reaching a scientific opinion involves uncertainty, revision, and internal debate. That's how science works. Paul appears to disagree.

But the diary also contains something the scientists probably didn't anticipate becoming a news story: Fauci's unvarnished private assessments of Donald Trump, who he was advising in real time during the pandemic's most chaotic early days. The Guardian reports Fauci described the president as "rambling," "crazy," "desperate," "bumbling," "incompetent," "an idiot," "a true embarrassment," "totally nuts," and "truly an obnoxious adolescent." That's not a quote. That's a list. A long, specific, apparently heartfelt list from a man who had a front-row seat.

Rand Paul's Own Interesting History With Medical Credentials

A quick note for context, because context matters: Rand Paul is an ophthalmologist who created his own ophthalmology board after declining to take the test from the actual ophthalmology board. He has used his position as a doctor to dismiss mask mandates, challenge vaccine guidance, and position himself as a lone courageous truth-teller against the medical establishment. He has also, repeatedly, used Senate hearings to score cable news clips against Fauci rather than extract useful information.

This is the man conducting what he calls a serious investigation into pandemic origins. Draw your own conclusions about how seriously to take the framing.

What This Hearing Is Actually About

Look, some genuine questions about COVID-19's origins remain legitimately open. The scientific consensus leans toward natural spillover, but intelligence agencies have disagreed with each other, and a full accounting has never been completed. A serious, good-faith congressional investigation into pandemic preparedness, research funding oversight, and biosafety protocols would be a legitimate and valuable use of Senate time.

This is not that. This is a hearing scheduled specifically to put a 85-year-old retired public servant under lights before cameras, timed to drop alongside a document full of private diary entries, and designed to produce exactly the kind of clips that fundraising emails are built around. The fact that Fauci apparently wrote some very accurate private assessments of Trump's management style makes it a better television event than Paul probably planned for — just not in the direction he intended.