Trump yelled at me and told me he loved me

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who advised the federal government on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, describes in detail his horrific relationship with Donald Trump in his new memoir.

Excerpts from the book “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service” were published by several media outlets on Thursday, a week before its scheduled release.

The book’s chapter on Trump, titled “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” chronicles the doctor’s time as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – a position he held for nearly 40 years before retiring in 2022. About 70 of the book’s 450 pages are devoted to Trump, the New York Times reported.

Much of their relationship, Fauci wrote, involved Trump alternately praising and then harshly criticizing him for things he had said about the COVID-19 pandemic. In a June 2020 phone call, the former president vented his anger at Trump for saying the vaccine against the virus was unlikely to provide lifelong protection and booster shots would likely be needed, according to book excerpts obtained by The Daily Beast.

“The president was angry and said I couldn’t keep doing this to him. He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble and I was only making it worse,” Fauci reportedly wrote, noting that the then-president’s comments to him were often full of profanity.

“I have a pretty thick skin, but being yelled at by the President of the United States is no fun, no matter how many times he tells you he loves you,” he recalled, according to excerpts quoted by the Times.

In his last conversation with Trump shortly before the 2020 election, Fauci reportedly wrote, Trump insisted on beating current President Joe Biden and used rather flowery language to describe the Democrat.

“I’m going to win this election by a damn landslide,” Trump said, according to Fauci’s book. “Just wait and see. I’ve always done things my way. And I always win, no matter what all these other damn people think. And that motherfucker Biden. He’s so damn stupid. I’m going to kick his ass in this election.”

The longtime scientist served as Biden’s chief medical adviser until his retirement.

Fauci also said Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence had been unusually respectful toward Trump.

“Vice presidents are almost always publicly loyal to the president. That’s part of their job. But in my opinion, Vice President Pence has sometimes overdone it,” he wrote, according to the Times. “At task force meetings, he would often say something like, ‘There are a lot of smart people here, but we all know the smartest person is at the top.'”

Fauci recently appeared before the House COVID-19 Committee, whose Republican members have repeatedly suggested he is masterminding a cover-up of the virus’s origins. Those claims, Fauci told lawmakers, are “absolutely false and simply absurd.”

His book will be published on June 18th.

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