A new profile of Dr. Anthony Fauci by The Washington Post offers a number of revelations about the inner workings of America’s top infectious disease doctor.
Fauci was profiled in June, and revealed in the interview that he doesn’t regret missing key moments in his kids’ childhoods, didn’t get along with former President Donald Trump even before the COVID-19 pandemic and that he enforces tighter restrictions for journalists meeting him than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
America’s most famous doctor talks mitigating covid, giving your adversaries the benefit of the doubt and working way too much. https://t.co/cMoJRAJ4p9
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 29, 2022
The profile states Fauci did not find it difficult to manage a work-life balance during his career, because he simply chose to prioritize work. “I am sorry and sad, but I don’t regret,” Fauci said, referring to missing events like his daughter’s soccer games. “I tried as best as I could. … I didn’t miss them all. I went to a few of them.”
“I would do it over again,” he said, “because I was doing things that are really important.”
A longtime collaborator of Fauci’s, AIDS activist Peter Staley, revealed to The Post that Fauci and Trump had rifts in their relationship before the coronavirus came along, chiefly because Trump didn’t pay enough attention to Fauci.
“Tony was telling us that he was already shaking his head at Trump,” Staley said. “He was amazed that he was into his sixth president [as director of NIAID], and this was the first one that he hadn’t met with, like, three years in. And he was just stunned by that.”
Staley also added that many activists had viewed Fauci as friendlier over his career to Republican presidents than Democrats. Fauci himself said that he was an independent who didn’t have a partisan voting record, and had high praise for George W. Bush among the presidents he had worked for. (RELATED: Fauci Admits Fight Over Travel Mask Mandate Is All About Hoarding Power)
The journalist who profiled Fauci caught COVID-19 about two weeks before they met. In order to meet the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, she was required to provide negative tests three days in a row before their interview. She was also made to wear a mask the entire time she was around Fauci, including while outside, despite the limited evidence that the virus even spreads outdoors.
Fauci would go on to test positive for the virus anyways just days later after attending the College of the Holy Cross’s 1962 class reunion.
Overall, the profile depicted Fauci as a humble public servant fighting for the common good. The highest paid employee in the federal government said he works 12 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, even at age 81. “You gotta f—ing suck it up,” he said.