President Donald Trump issued a scathing critique of Dr. Anthony Fauci on Truth Social, defending his administration’s pandemic record while accusing the former top federal infectious disease expert of making “crazy” policy calls and attempting to protect China regarding the origins of COVID-19.
Trump’s statement comes as Fauci prepares to testify Wednesday under subpoena before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. The hearing follows the public release of over 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary entries spanning from December 2019 to December 2022, which federal officials retrieved from government computer servers.
In his Truth Social post, President Trump described Operation Warp Speed—his administration’s initiative to rapidly accelerate vaccine development—as a “SPECTACULAR SUCCESS” and claimed he personally overrode Fauci’s recommendations.
“His ideas were CRAZY!” Trump wrote, adding that he maintained from the beginning that the virus originated from the Wuhan Laboratory in China, while alleging Fauci “strongly disagreed, always trying to protect China.”
Trump pointed to Fauci’s evolving public guidance during the early months of the health crisis, specifically regarding face coverings. “Remember at the beginning he was an anti-masker. He then switched to a super-masker,” Trump wrote. He noted that he declined to implement federal shutdowns, opting instead for a “Federalist way” by allowing state governors to make their own decisions.
Trump stated that he relied less on Fauci over time and later reached out to Joe Biden to express concerns about Fauci’s guidance.
“I called Biden to tell him Fauci was no good, either didn’t have a clue, or was dishonest. The call was well received, but sadly, not acted on,” Trump wrote. He argued that Biden subsequently gave Fauci “vast destructive power,” asserting that “many more people died of Covid under the Biden Administration than under the Trump Administration.”
Trump’s statement directly addresses issues central to the newly released diaries. In those private journals, Fauci recorded his changing relationship with Trump, describing early positive interactions before venting in late 2020 about Trump’s public statements and characterizing his leadership style as erratic. In July 2021, Fauci privately wrote critical assessments of Trump while praising the atmosphere in Biden’s Oval Office.
The diary entries also document early discussions surrounding the origins of the coronavirus, an issue that has driven years of debate between Fauci and congressional investigators. In January 2020 entries, Fauci wrote that while the live animal market in Wuhan was an amplifier rather than the source, “somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.” A week later, detailing a call with infectious disease experts, Fauci noted that while two experts believed mutations occurred naturally, “the rest felt that deliberate insertion was possible” and that “we could not let this go.”
Paul has pointed to those entries as evidence that Fauci and his colleagues privately entertained lab-origin theories that they publicly minimized. Fauci has consistently denied downplaying the theory or misleading the public, maintaining that he kept an open mind while relying on the prevailing scientific data at the time.
U.S. intelligence agencies and international health bodies remain divided on the virus’s true origin. A World Health Organization panel reported last year that available evidence suggested natural animal-to-human transmission, though it noted a lab leak could not be ruled out due to unreleased records from China. Within the U.S. intelligence community, the FBI, the Department of Energy, and the CIA have assessed or leaned toward a laboratory incident, whereas the National Intelligence Council and four other agencies found natural exposure to an animal was more likely.
Wednesday’s hearing is expected to mark another sharp exchange between Fauci and Paul. Paul has previously accused Fauci of lying to Congress by denying that the National Institutes of Health funded “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and encouraged the Justice Department to prosecute him. Fauci has repeatedly rejected those claims, arguing the studies cited did not meet federal definitions for gain-of-function research and involved viruses genetically far distant from the one that caused the pandemic. Former President Biden issued a preemptive pardon for Fauci shortly before leaving office.
READ: Inside the Fauci Diaries: 1,000 Pages Of Private Notes Released Ahead Of Senate Showdown
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