Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who advised the federal government on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, detailed his whiplash-inducing relationship with Donald Trump in his new memoir.
Excerpts from the book, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service,” were shared Thursday by several media outlets the week before its scheduled release.
The book’s chapter about Trump, titled, “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” recounts the doctor’s time working as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ― a position he held for nearly 40 years before retiring in 2022. About 70 of the book’s 450 pages are focused on Trump, the New York Times reported.
Much of their relationship, Fauci wrote, involved Trump alternately praising him then excoriating him for things he’d said about the COVID-19 pandemic. In one June 2020 phone call from Trump, the former president unleashed his fury on him for saying the virus’ vaccine was unlikely to provide lifetime protection and would probably require boosters, according to book excerpts obtained by the Daily Beast.
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“The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him. He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse,” Fauci reportedly wrote, noting that the then-president’s comments to him were often laden with expletives.
“I have a pretty thick skin, but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun,” he recalled, according to excerpts quoted by the Times.
In his last conversation with Trump shortly before the 2020 election, Fauci reportedly wrote, Trump insisted he’d beat now-President Joe Biden and used some some colorful language to describe the Democrat.
“I am going to win this election by a fucking landslide,” Trump said, according to Fauci’s book. “Just wait and see. I always did things my way. And I always win, no matter what all these other fucking people think. And that fucker Biden. He is so fucking stupid. I am going to kick his fucking ass in this election.”
The longtime scientist went on to serve as Biden’s chief medical adviser until his retirement.
Fauci also said Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, was abnormally deferential to Trump.
“Vice presidents are almost always publicly loyal to the president. That is part of the job. But in my opinion, Vice President Pence sometimes overdid it,” he wrote, per the Times. “During task force meetings, he often said some version of, ‘There are a lot of smart people around here, but we all know that the smartest person is upstairs.’”
Fauci recently appeared before the House COVID-19 committee, whose Republican members have repeatedly suggested he masterminded a cover-up of the virus’s origins. Those claims, Fauci told the lawmakers, are “absolutely false and simply preposterous.”
His book is out on June 18.
