Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary was supposed to contain the goods. At least, that’s what “The Daily Show” host Jordan Klepper seemed to hope after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) released the former White House chief medical adviser’s diary entries earlier this week.
Instead, Klepper found something considerably less scandalous: Fauci documenting what it was like to become one of the most recognizable people in America during the COVID pandemic, receiving compliments on Instagram and accidentally butt-dialing Barbra Streisand.
“Regardless, I know that Republicans remember COVID because ever since the pandemic, they’ve been calling for the arrest of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who spearheaded America’s COVID response,” Klepper said on Thursday night’s episode of “The Daily Show.” “And this week, one of his biggest haters escalated things.”
On Thursday, Fauci, a former top U.S. public health official, was questioned during a Republican-led Senate committee hearing into the origins of COVID and his handling of the pandemic. During the hearing, he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights.
You can watch the full “The Daily Show” segment in the video above.
Klepper joked that if Paul had gone to the trouble of releasing Fauci’s diaries, surely they contained something incriminating. Instead, one entry had Fauci reflecting on his newfound celebrity status.
Fauci wrote, “It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable.”
“Yeah,” Klepper responded. “It’s not really a secret. Everyone knew– everyone knew that.”
The diary also apparently had some celebrity gossip, too. Fauci wrote about an Instagram post featuring supermodel Tyra Banks, noting that “One person said that Tyra was very sexy but that I was even more sexy than she was.”
Klepper was delighted by the revelation.
“Are we supposed to be surprised that Fauci wrote about being called sexier than Tyra Banks?” he asked. “If someone called me sexier than Tyra Banks, I’d write that in my diary.”
Klepper suggested that the diary’s celebrity entries were less evidence of wrongdoing than a glimpse at an older man discovering the unhinged nature of social media comments. He then turned to another entry, in which Fauci mentioned receiving an eggplant and water-splashing emoji from an Instagram commenter.
“Needless to say, a great honor,” Klepper quipped.
The diary also revealed Fauci’s brush with another legendary celebrity. In one entry, he wrote, “Had great call with Barbra Streisand. I told her that I work listening to her songs on ALEXA. She really did not know what ALEXA was. I accidentally butt called her later in the evening.”
Klepper was again amused.
“You butt dialed the Barbra Streisand, the funny girl, the Dolly Levi, the Yentl Mendel, the Esther Hoffman Howard?” he said, rattling off some of Streisand’s most famous roles.
For Klepper, the diary entries ultimately failed to deliver the explosive revelations that had been promised.
“So, basically, these diary entries didn’t reveal any shocking revelations about Fauci’s criminal negligence or intent,” he said.
Klepper then imagined Fauci’s tactic of pleading the Fifth being applied to increasingly mundane questions, joking that even a question about Fauci’s favorite Barbra Streisand song might receive the same response.
“I respectfully decline to answer,” Fauci said in Klepper’s imagined exchange.
“Damn it. He’s good,” Klepper responded. “He’s very good.”
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