Fauci’s diary details how his relationship with Trump soured

There's something almost quaint about reading that Trump once called Fauci "a terrific guy," given how that relationship ended up defining half the political arguments of 2020. But the diary details are worth sitting with, because they confirm what a lot of people suspected in real time and got mocked for saying out loud: Fauci wasn't just delivering science, he was managing Trump, and the moment he felt he couldn't manage him anymore, the tone shifted fast.

That's not a scandal by itself. Advisers manage principals all the time. What's notable is how the public was fed a version of events where Fauci was the apolitical adult in the room and Trump was the erratic outsider undermining expertise. The diary suggests something messier, a working relationship that curdled for reasons that were as much personal and institutional as they were about masks or ventilators or hydroxychloroquine. Fauci had his own instincts about how to handle a mercurial president, and when those instincts stopped working, the breakdown became very public and very convenient for a press corps that had already decided who the hero and villain were.

None of this rewrites the pandemic response. Trump made real mistakes, and so did the public health bureaucracy he leaned on. But the record deserves to include the fact that "the science" was, in practice, a relationship between two men with their own instincts, egos, and political calculations. Pretending otherwise was never honest, and it's a little late for anyone to act surprised now that the diary says so plainly.