Dr Fauci's secret diaries told only half the story. Now White House insiders expose the REAL 'media diva'... and the humiliating fame-obsessed antics he left out

As the world wrestled with fears of coronavirus pandemic, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr Anthony Fauci pulled a White House communications staffer aside to make an unusual request.

The NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, he said, wanted to have him appear on the show as they prepared to kick off a new season.

The staffer replied that it might look bad for Fauci to be doing comedy sketches on television when Americans were dying from the coronavirus.

Fauci replied that actor Brad Pitt would be playing him on the show, emphasizing the importance of a possible appearance to communicate public health messaging.

The idea of casting Brad Pitt as the federal doctor for SNL had been a joke by Fauci during a CNN interview just weeks earlier, but the long-shot dream was now becoming a reality.

Fauci ultimately did not appear on the April 2020 show featuring Pitt as the federal doctor, but his hunger for media appearances became insatiable, sources tell the Daily Mail.

'Fauci was truly a maniac,' a former Trump official who worked with Fauci told the Daily Mail. 'He was like fan-girling all over himself.'

Early in the pandemic, sources told the Daily Mail, the White House approved of Fauci's appearances on television to explain the science behind the public health decisions.

But when Trump wrestled with efforts to reopen the country, Fauci became more difficult.

The doctor became a 'media diva,' a former Trump official told the Daily Mail, relishing in his celebrity status and demanding unprecedented clearance to speak to go on television.

Details of Fauci's frustration with Trump staff and his growing sense of celebrity are now revealed in his daily diaries – after they were released by Senator Rand Paul for public viewing.

'Despite my being kept out of the press by the Whit[e] House COMMS [communications] people, the media blitz about me continues strong, as well as the gimmick stuff like underwear (bikini) with either my name on the front or Govs. Cuomo or Newsom,' he wrote in an entry on May 19, 2020.

Fauci's once-private rage against administration officials earned ridicule from his former colleagues. 

'Now in the diary, we see literally behind the mask,' former White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley told the Daily Mail. 

Despite his obsession with appearing on television, Gidley recalled Fauci specifically expressed distaste about appearing on Fox News.

'He didn't like Fox News but he loved CNN,' Gidley said. 'People like Laura Ingraham and others, he didn't want to go on there because they asked him tough questions and asked him to show his work and he didn't want to show his work.'

'Clearly he wasn't a fan of mine,' wrote former White House deputy press secretary Alexa Henning on social media, sharing a screenshot of the Fauci's diary describing her as a 'mole who does not like me.' 

Staff recalled that Fauci bristled at attempts by staff to coach him up or brief him on the president's messaging before his media appearances. 

'He was very aloof early on, very condescending,' Gidley recalled. 'That only got worse as the cracks in the dam began.' 

Gidley recalled getting into an argument with Fauci in the Situation Room over masks, after the doctor gave federal officials what felt like conflicting information about when to wear a mask. 

Gidley said he realized then that it was all part of a show.

'That lying POS demanded we all wear masks - wearing a mask was based on a complete and total made up lie by Dr Fauci, along with the six feet of social distancing,' he said. 'All of it was designed to protect his celebrity.'

As media anchors were pressing Fauci on the president's decisions, White House officials grew frustrated that the doctor's advice would clash with comments from Trump and other federal health officials.

Media requests for Fauci flooded in, as top television anchors would send personal requests to the doctor, begging him to appear on their shows.

But top Trump officials instructed staff to dial back Fauci's appearances, a source confirmed to the Daily Mail. Fauci reportedly did not handle it well, and lashed out. 

'He was just addicted to going on TV,' one official noted.

When top television anchors repeatedly expressed exasperation that their media requests were being denied, Fauci blamed the White House staff, sparking angry personal calls to the White House from top anchors.

One White House press staffer recalled angry phone calls from then-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, who accused them of 'killing people' for keeping Fauci off of his show.

'He wanted to go on Cuomo every night,' the source recalled about Fauci.

Fauci tried to work with officials to expand his media profile, but the approvals were limited, prompting him to send an angry email to Trump advisor Michael Caputo who he privately described in his diary as being a 'sleazebag' and a 'con man' who was 'full of s**t.'

'As you know, I have been asked by virtually every network and cable outlet to get out there and deliver this potentially life-saving message. Yet every single one of these requests of late, which we re-submit every day, has been ignored or denied,' he fumed in the email sent to Caputo on July 3. 'We are missing an opportunity to save lives. Please consider this. Best regards, Tony.'

Caputo recalled in an interview that Fauci once insisted that he and his wife have breakfast at his house, where he was uniquely focused on his media bookings. Later, he even took a photo with Caputo's children while at the same time privately raging against him.

'I find that really disturbing, creepy,' Caputo said in a podcast interview hosted by the Brownstone Institute, adding that Fauci was 'pretty unkind' to him. 

Despite his complaints, Fauci was not completely cut off from the media, former White House officials told the Daily Mail, but they were selective in which interviews they would approve. 

By mid-July, Fauci wrote in his diary that an angry Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows phoned him about a comment he made during a Georgetown webinar that the coronavirus was 'a pandemic of historic proportions.'

'I think we can't deny that fact. It's something that when we look back in history, it will be comparable to what we saw in 1918,' he said, comparing the coronavirus pandemic to the much deadlier Spanish flu. 

Meadows demanded that Fauci retract his statement, prompting him to offer muted clarification that he was just being taken out of context.

But Meadows went on television to inform the public that Fauci's comment was 'not accurate and not based on science.'

'I can tell you that not only is that false, it is irresponsible to suggest so,' Meadows stated on Fox News.

Meadows and his 'nitpicking,' Fauci wrote, was almost the last straw.

'For the first time, I am seriously considering resigning from the Task Force. I cannot tolerate people following my every word,' he wrote.

Fauci complained in his diary that White House communications staffers were 'continuing to jerk me around' on his requests for television approvals.

'Clearly, they do not want me on Major TV, but are afraid to admit it,' he wrote in October 2020. 'This must be pointed out in the book!'

The Daily Mail contacted Fauci for comment.