I think it’s safe to say that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s upcoming memoir, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, due to drop next week, will be a best seller. Not only does it document the most threatening health crisis that Americans have faced since the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, but it also chronicles how a TV talk show host was tasked with saving America from this malady. Donald Trump was not up to the task, to put it mildly, and Dr. Fauci, a veteran of five previous presidential administrations, found himself the scapegoat of a bewildered and beleagured madman who became increasingly aware that COVID was not going to “just disappear” but rather would do in his political career in the last year of his term. Daily Beast:
“Let’s just say, I found this to be out of the ordinary,” Fauci wrote. According to the immunologist, Trump would drop f-bombs often in conversations, including one where the then-president claimed Fauci cost the U.S. economy “one trillion fucking dollars.”
Donald Trump shouted foul-mouthed abuse at Anthony Fauci, then lurched into telling him he loved him—and claimed he would win the 2020 election in a “fucking landslide,” the top medical adviser reveals in his new memoir.
In the eagerly awaited book, Fauci describes conversations with Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic in which the then-president would “announce that he loved me and then scream at me on the phone.”
We saw vintage Trump during the COVID pandemic. Denial, then bargaining, followed by fantasy about the virus simply disappearing, or disappearing within the next two weeks, right before the Easter holiday. Trump utterly lacked the ability to cope. This book is going to be a bombshell, I predict.
On the page, Fauci describes interactions with Trump as the administration wrestled with the president’s opposition to public health measures including masking; Trump’s desire to reopen the country; his indulgence of advisers with dubious qualifications pushing untested treatments; his bizarre suggestion that bleach might kill the virus; and, ultimately, his own hospitalization with COVID.
Fauci, the veteran director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), became the face of the pandemic and tried to navigate between Trump’s erratic statements and his own medical expertise. He then became Biden’s chief medical adviser and retired in 2022. In March last year, the New York Post reported that Fauci sold his memoir for “just under $5 million.” Crown Publishing, a Penguin Random House imprint, said that figure was inaccurate.
In 2020, within weeks of the first COVID cases, Fauci became a Republican punching bag. Enemies saw him as an avatar of the medical establishment when he relentlessly urged COVID precautions, starting with social distancing, moving to lockdowns, then masking and vaccines.
He told Congress this month that he, his wife, and his adult daughter were the subjects of death threats. During the pandemic he received a full-scale security detail.
I think Congress should pass a law whereby Trump has to reimburse Dr. Fauci for his security costs. Trump created this problem. Fauci was doing his job. He was doing the same job he had done for many decades. Trump simply went ballistics on Fauci because he can’t deal with reality, only optics. Trump wanted Fauci to lie that all would be fine in two weeks, just like he wanted Mike Pence to help him overthrow the government. It’s never any differnent with Trump. Only the supporting players change, but the demands are always the same.
Describing the frightening early days of the pandemic, as large swathes of U.S. society were shut down and economic and physical damage mounted, Fauci writes of his “first experience [of] the brunt of the president’s rage.”
“On the evening of June 3 [2020], my cell phone rang,” Fauci writes, “and the caller—the president—started screaming at me.”
Trump was angered by Fauci telling a journalist that immunity to coronaviruses was “usually six months to a year,” meaning that when a COVID-19 vaccine was found, booster shots would likely be needed.
Trump went nuts over the booster aspect, you may recall. He wanted a permanent miracle and he wanted it yesterday. Fauci points out that this was common practice for viruses including the flu but also that his remark was “wrongly reported on Twitter and in some media outlets as the Covid vaccine protecting people only for a very short time.” That pushed Trump’s rage button, bigly.
“It was quite a phone call,” Fauci writes. “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.
“He added that the stock market went up only six hundred points in response to the positive phase 1 vaccine news and it should have gone up a thousand points and so I cost the country ‘one trillion fucking dollars.’
“I have a pretty thick skin,” Fauci writes, “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.”
Fauci may risk angering Trump again not just by detailing the conversation but by saying Trump told him, via an intermediary, he was sorry. Trump is notoriously apology averse.
Fauci says he was “mystified” but “resolved not to let [the call] throw me off my game.”
Trump, however, “seemed to feel competitive” with Fauci, in terms of public profile and acceptance.
Eventually, Fauci describes “what turned out to be my last conversation with President Trump.”
At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020, Fauci writes, he was at home when Trump called from Air Force One.
“Tony,” Trump said, “I really like you, and you know that, but what the fuck are you doing? You really need to be positive. You constantly drop bombs on me.”
Two days before Election Day, Trump was upset about Fauci telling The Washington Post that the U.S. was still “in for a whole lot of hurt.” The COVID case count was 9 million, with 230,000 dead.
“Everybody wants me to fire you,” Trump said. “But I am not going to fire you, you have too illustrious a career, but you have to be positive. The country cannot stay locked down.
“You have to give them hope… I like you, but so many people—not only in the White House, but throughout the country—hate you because of what you are doing.”
Now this next quote is going to have Trump utterly enraged, unless I miss my guess.
Trump was fixated on winning a second term. On Nov. 1, he continued: “I am going to win this election by a fucking landslide. 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.”
Great, Donald. You didn’t do it in 2020 and you won’t do it in 2024. But you just keep telling yourself that, so that you have a comfortable alternative reality in which to dwell, while the real world keeps blowing up around you into criminal trials. Such is what you have sown, such is what you will reap.
All those f-bombs in normal conversation.
But let’s not forget that Obama once wore a tan suit – and Michelle once had bare arms.
and don’t forget Hillary’s emails
Perfect timing and more ammunition for the Biden team. The “Trump plays golf” video and this book will remind voters of just how much blood this moron has on his hands.
I know Charles Manson and Ted Bundy were evil, sadistic killers, but why were they locked up and, in Ted’s case, executed? They killed far far far fewer people than Trump! America…when are you going to wash that innocent blood OFF YOUR NARCISSITIC HANDS and lock this serial killer up?????????
Using the KISS principal:
Trump cost at least half a million Americans their lives by refusing to shut down the economy, wear a mask,,and git the pandemic social.distance. No one in the White House dared wear a mask. Covid cut through the many, many staffers like a hot knife through butter. Why? He thought wearing a mask made him look.weak and he refused to listen to exoerts because he thinks he knows more than they do.
Biden did what was necessary,, and yes, the recovery took time. He also took the experts advice and ran with it. And got Covid under control. And the economy came back faster than expected.
Donald, bubbie, dead people don’t spend money.