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A former president. A private phone call. And a 1,000-page diary that was never supposed to leave a government server. This week it did — and page 914 is the one everybody’s talking about.
Here’s the full breakdown of the Fauci diary leak, what Obama allegedly said about Donald Trump and Don Jr., where the “Fauci kills puppies” shirts fit in, and why Fauci just pleaded the Fifth 111 times in front of the Senate. Receipts over rhetoric — let’s go.
What Is the Fauci Diary Leak?
Dr. Anthony Fauci — who ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022 and served as the White House’s chief medical adviser during the pandemic — kept a personal diary covering roughly 2019 through 2022. According to reporting, the journals were discovered on government servers and turned over to Senate Republicans, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) released more than 1,000 pages of the typo-filled entries to the public this past weekend.
Paul has feuded with Fauci for years over the government’s pandemic response and the origins of COVID-19. The diary drop is the latest — and loudest — chapter in that fight.
What Obama Said About Trump and Don Jr. — the Page 914 Phone Call
The entry lighting up every feed is dated November 4, 2021. In it, Fauci describes a 25-minute phone call he says he received from former President Barack Obama, who reached out to offer support while Fauci was under fire from the political right.
Per the diary, Fauci told Obama that Donald Trump Jr. was selling “Fauci kills puppies” T-shirts and sweatshirts on his website to raise campaign money. Obama’s reported reaction: he called Trump Jr. “a f***ing moron” — then apologized for the language — and went on to describe Donald Trump as “a hopeless idiot” and a pathological liar.
Fauci also wrote that Obama told him he was a “civilian” who shouldn’t have to put up with the attacks, and vented frustration that moderate Republicans weren’t publicly defending him. Elsewhere in the diary, Fauci had his own words for Trump, describing him in a March 2021 entry as an “obnoxious adolescent.”
Worth noting: Obama has not publicly addressed the account. These are Fauci’s contemporaneous notes of a private conversation — that’s the receipt we have, and it’s the only one.
The “Fauci Kills Puppies” Shirts, Explained
The merch was real. The claim behind it was disputed. The slogan traced back to a study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases reporting that NIAID-funded research included experiments exposing beagle puppies to sand flies. The journal issued a correction to that paper in October 2021 — the month before the Obama call — but by then “Fauci kills puppies” had already become a campaign fundraising slogan on Trump Jr.’s site.
Fauci Pleads the Fifth — 111 Times
After the diary went public, Fauci testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about the origins of the coronavirus. Over roughly three hours, he invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times and accused Sen. Paul of trying to build a criminal case against him.
Meanwhile, the current White House responded to the diary revelations by going after Obama directly, with a spokesperson calling him one of the most dishonest and divisive presidents in history. So no — nobody is de-escalating.
Why the Fauci Diary Matters
Strip away the profanity and here’s what this story is actually about: private words meeting public records. Obama built a post-presidency on never saying Trump’s name in anger. The diary — if accurate — shows what that restraint sounds like when the cameras are off. And Fauci, the most documented public health official in American history, is now being prosecuted in the court of public opinion by his own paperwork.
The bigger question is the one that outlives this news cycle: when a public servant’s private diary gets pulled off a government server and released by a political rival, is that transparency — or is it a warning to everyone in government to never write anything down again?
So you tell me: fair game, or should it have stayed in the drawer? Drop your take in the comments on TEG Exchange — the debate is already going.
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Sources: Fauci diary entries released by Sen. Rand Paul; reporting by The Daily Beast, HuffPost, Raw Story, and The Independent.