Jake Tapper's name appears 41 times in Dr. Anthony Fauci's private pandemic diary. Not as an interview subject. Not as a professional contact. As a dinner companion, a texting buddy, and a willing vessel for questions Fauci wanted asked on national television.
You weren't allowed to visit your mother in the hospital.
Senator Rand Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released the 1,141-page diary over the weekend, covering December 2019 through December 2022. The entries read less like the private reflections of America's top infectious disease official and more like the social calendar of a Washington power broker who happened to have a lab coat. Fox News first reported the details of the media relationships buried inside.
The July 2020 entry is where it starts getting interesting. Fauci wrote that he "had dinner over Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper's home in DC. Terrific couple. Friendship building." This was mid-pandemic. Restaurants were shut down. Half the country couldn't get a haircut. But Fauci was building friendships over what we can only assume was a lovely spread.
By October 23, 2020 — eleven days before the presidential election — the relationship had apparently graduated to home hosting. "Had dinner at my home with Jake and Jennifer Tapper," Fauci wrote. "Relaxed, good time. Jake clearly believes that Trump is totally nuts."
So the nation's top COVID advisor was sharing private dinners with a supposedly objective CNN anchor who was openly trashing the sitting president. And then that same anchor would go on television and interview administration officials about pandemic policy with a straight face.
It gets worse. The diary reveals Fauci wasn't just socializing with Tapper — he was stage-managing his coverage. Fauci wrote that he "gave Jake some questions to ask" pediatrician Dr. Brett Giroir during a CNN interview. He also noted that after one April 2020 interview, "Jake wanted to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems."
Tapper wasn't the only media figure treating Fauci like a personal celebrity. ABC's George Stephanopoulos texted Fauci, "Thank you, Tony. So impressive." NBC's Andrea Mitchell personally called Fauci's cell phone on July 4, 2020, "very apologetic about not being able to have me on the show." Chuck Todd texted him after interviews to ask what Fauci thought of the coverage. CBS's Dr. Jonathan LaPook emailed Fauci "over the weekend to prep him for his interview" on vaccines — then went on air and mentioned Fauci "several times."
The entire press corps was operating as Fauci's public relations department.
CNN's Dana Bash may have delivered the most revealing text of all. After a heated exchange between Fauci and Representative Jim Jordan in April 2021, Bash wrote to Fauci: "I just watched the whole Jordan thing. Again, you're a better man than I.... As our friend Wolf Blitzer said to me yesterday — no one would have blamed you if you said simply 'Mr. Jordan, go f--- yourself.'"
Our friend Wolf Blitzer. That's a CNN anchor referring to another CNN anchor as a mutual friend with the government's top health official, while encouraging him to tell a sitting congressman to go pound sand. These are the people who spent four years lecturing you about "following the science" and "trusting the experts."
Some will argue this is just normal Washington networking — sources and reporters have always been friendly. Which is an interesting way to describe a government official ghost-writing interview questions for a host who then pretends to be holding that same government accountable on live television. Normal networking doesn't usually involve one side writing the other side's script.
Fauci's diary also reveals he privately acknowledged the Wuhan wet market "was not the source" of COVID-19 as early as January 26, 2020, writing that "the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market" and that the market was merely "the amplifier." By February 1, 2020, only 2 out of roughly 12 scientists on a conference call supported a natural origin theory. Yet publicly, Fauci spent years dismissing lab-leak questions as conspiracy theories. In an August 24, 2021 diary entry, he called congressional inquiries into COVID origins "an amazing and unbelievable waste of our time."
He knew the science didn't support his public position. He said so in his own handwriting. And the journalists he was dining with never pressed him on it — because they were too busy asking him what questions they should ask other people.