A top official in President Donald Trump’s first administration was forced to take over a key public health meeting from the president, who was “rambling” and refused to stay on topic.
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According to a report from the Washington Post, the diaries of Anthony Fauci, the NIH scientist who led the U.S. fight against the COVID pandemic, reveal Trump’s erratic behavior during the health crisis that shut down the country.
Fauci’s personal diary entries, released this weekend by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), provide an intimate portrait of a president unraveling in real time as the pandemic spiraled out of control.
Their initial encounter seemed promising. On Jan. 29, 2020, Trump approached Fauci in the Situation Room with apparent deference.
“The President came in and the first thing he said as he looked at me was: ‘Anthony, you are really a famous guy,'” Fauci recorded. Trump stayed for 20 minutes, directing most questions at Fauci while deputies looked on in astonishment.
The civility evaporated quickly. By March, Fauci was reportedly exhausted by Trump’s inability to focus on the matter at hand.
On March 27, Fauci documented a Trump press conference meltdown: “Very laborious press conference where the POTUS rambled on. He wasted the opportunity to just focus on the relief package and went into his diatribe against previous administrations.”
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The next day, the situation deteriorated further. Fauci was forced to seize control of a meeting to prevent further disaster. “AMAZING interaction with POTUS. … I led the discussions since the POTUS kept referring to me. It was a disturbingly rambling discussion since he kept talking about TV ratings, and HC [Hydroxychloroquine], and influenza and virtually everything else as I was trying to keep him on track (with the help of the VP),” he wrote.
Fauci had to explicitly demand Trump focus on critical messaging: “I insisted through the rambling and lack of attention span that the POTUS explicitly say that this is NOT a quarantine.”
By August, Trump’s focus had deteriorated to alarming levels. Fauci documented a president removed from reality, “throwing around the F— word” and ranting incoherently.
On Aug. 4, Fauci recorded: “He’s desperate and still does not understand the pandemic. Very interesting encounter.”
Three days later, Trump’s delusion deepened, with Fauci documenting: “POTUS acting even more erratically. Keeps insisting that increased case numbers are due only to increased testing, ignoring the increases in percent positive, hospitalizations and deaths (>1000/day).”
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