Newly released diary entries attributed to Dr. Anthony Fauci, made public by Senator Rand Paul ahead of Fauci’s scheduled congressional testimony continue to make news. Dan Proft shared archival audio of the late Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Kary Mullis, credited with developing the PCR test, who offered pointed criticism of Fauci’s scientific credibility years before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Mullis argued that Fauci lacked genuine expertise in virology and had refused to publicly debate credentialed critics, including Mullis himself, despite repeated invitations to do so. Proft noted that Mullis died in 2019, meaning he did not live to see the pandemic-era policies he had effectively predicted.
Proft welcomed David Harsanyi, senior writer at the Washington Examiner, co-host of the You’re Wrong podcast, and author of The Rise of BlueAnon: How the Democrats Became a Party of Conspiracy Theorists, to discuss his reaction to the diary’s contents. Harsanyi said he found the entries infuriating on a personal level, describing Fauci’s apparent preoccupation with celebrity attention and social gatherings during a period when ordinary Americans faced serious restrictions on basic life events, including funerals and graduations. Harsanyi argued the diary reinforces a pattern in which Fauci continued making public claims well after evidence had emerged privately contradicting them, citing specific examples involving the pandemic’s fatality rate and the plausibility of a natural origin tied to a Wuhan wet market.
Harsanyi and Proft discussed a diary entry from March 2020 in which Fauci appeared to take a measure of pride in the market impact of his early mitigation recommendations, including a historic stock market decline following a major press conference, a tone Harsanyi said stood in stark contrast to the hardship many Americans experienced during the same period. Harsanyi also raised concerns about the broader institutional failure surrounding pandemic policy, arguing that public officials who deferred to Fauci’s recommendations without independent scrutiny, including decisions to close schools and restrict religious gatherings, bear meaningful responsibility alongside Fauci himself.
The conversation also touched on diary entries describing friction between Fauci and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, as well as Fauci’s reported efforts to marginalize dissenting scientists, including Stanford’s Dr. Scott Atlas and signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration. Harsanyi argued the diary suggests a broader unwillingness to tolerate scientific disagreement throughout the pandemic response, and expressed frustration that despite what he views as a significant erosion of public trust in institutions, no meaningful accountability has followed either for Fauci or for journalists Harsanyi said maintained close personal relationships with him throughout the pandemic while ostensibly covering his conduct. Harsanyi specifically criticized CNN journalists Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, arguing that documented friendly correspondence between Fauci and reporters covering him reflects a broader erosion of adversarial journalism in favor of access-driven coverage.
Harsanyi closed by expressing broader concern about the long-term consequences of the pandemic response for public trust in institutions, arguing that a future health crisis would likely be met with even greater public skepticism and political polarization than COVID-19 initially generated, given how thoroughly trust in figures like Fauci has since eroded across large segments of the public.