The Making of Anthony Fauci: How America’s Most Powerful Health Official Rose to Power

Friends, San Francisco, 1988. That year, the front page of the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Examiner ran an article titled, An Open Letter to an Incompetent Idiot, Dr. Anthony Fauci, I Call You a Murderer. The man who wrote this article was Larry Kramer, a leading figure in the American AIDS rights movement. The article said, I have been screaming at you at the National Institutes of Health since 1984. I called you a monster. I called you an idiot. And now I call you a murderer. You are in charge of all federally funded AIDS treatment research. In the name of good, you make decisions that cause people to die. I call this murder. This was in one of the largest newspapers in the country. On the Sunday front page, someone called America's most powerful medical official, Anthony Fauci, a murderer. That year, Fauci was 47 years old and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID. Forty years later, today in 2026, Fauci once again stands at the judgment seat of history because of 400 pages of top secret files. Yesterday, we talked in detail about the 400 pages of secret Fauci files declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on her last day in office. The content is explosive with so many details. This long overdue truth about the pandemic is something everyone should know. As many friends wrote in their comments, it truly makes one's blood run cold. So if you haven't seen that episode yet, I strongly suggest you watch it after this one. After watching, please help me by using the fan hot push feature to help spread the truth further and faster. Thanks to Olivia Hsu for the suggestion. From being denounced as a murderer in 1988 to the 2026 top secret documents on masking him, why is Anthony Fauci always able to steadily control the situation during major infectious disease storms in America? What kind of person is Fauci, really? Why, despite being surrounded by infamy, has he been able to serve under seven U.S. presidents without falling, sitting firmly on the throne of Washington's medical pope? Today, we'll take a look at Fauci's unmasked life. The story begins on Christmas Eve 1940. On the eve of Christmas, in Bensonhurst, an Italian immigrant community at the southern tip of Brooklyn, New York, a family named Fauci welcomed their second child. The child's grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Sicily, Italy, in the late 19th century. Like all the Italian families crowded into Brooklyn's narrow streets at the time, they had heavy accents, were Catholic, and were determined to climb the social ladder. The child's father was a pharmacist. After getting his degree from Columbia University, he didn't go to a big hospital but returned to Brooklyn to open his own small pharmacy. The family lived right above the shop. This is a classic portrait of American immigrants in the 1940s. The counter downstairs and the beds upstairs. The boy who came out of this small pharmacy was named Anthony Stephen Fauci. In his early teens, Fauci couldn't go out and play after school. Instead, he had to help his mother and sister at the register. Or he'd have to ride his bike through the streets of Brooklyn, delivering prescriptions door to door. Delivering medicine by bike sounds nice, even a bit romantic. But imagine, what did a 10-year-old Fauci have to face back then? All kinds of strangers. The poor, the rich, the kind ones who tipped, the cold ones who rushed him, the friendly ones who chatted, and the impatient ones who'd slam the door in his face. Young Fauci had no choice. He had to learn to read the person at the door within 30 seconds. This skill became his sharpest weapon in the Washington Power Games over the next 54 years. He got into Regis High School, a highly selective Jesuit school on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Fauci studied Greek and Latin in school and was the captain of the basketball team. Later, he went to Holy Cross, majoring in classics and philosophy with a minor in pre-med. In 1966, he graduated first in his class from Cornell Medical College. Two years later, he made a choice that surprised everyone. At that time, the Vietnam War was at its peak and all Cornell-trained doctors were being drafted into the military. But Fauci didn't go to the front lines in Vietnam. Instead, he joined the U.S. Public Health Service and entered the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, in Bethesda, Maryland. You have to realize, back then, the NIH's status in the medical world was nowhere near as prominent as it is today. It was an unremarkable campus in the D.C. suburbs with limited funding, limited attention, and almost zero political leverage. Most of his Cornell classmates went to big New York hospitals as clinicians. Within a few years, they were driving sports cars and living in big houses on Long Island. But Fauci chose a path that, at the time, seemed to have absolutely no future. Why? Because he saw something that others didn't. By 1983, Fauci was 43 years old and had been at the NIH for 15 years. In those 15 years, he rose from a clinical associate to a core research position within the NIAID, head of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. Scientifically, he truly made his mark during those 15 years. He studied a rare autoimmune disease called vasculitis, which had a mortality rate of nearly 100% before his research. But he and his team brought the rate for this disease down to almost zero. This was a genuine, almost miraculous achievement in 20th century medical history. So between 1983 and 2002, he became one of the most cited scientists in all scientific journals worldwide. But just as his career trajectory was at its peak, in the early 1980s, he began to grow restless. In 2024, Fauci published his memoir. Later, during an interview at the think tank CSIS, the host asked him, You mentioned in your memoir that when you turned 40, you began to feel restless, as if you hadn't really achieved anything. Despite being a highly respected physician by then and conducting groundbreaking research, why did you have those feelings? Listen closely to Fauci's answer, everyone. He said, I had a feeling that I had to take on the challenge of this brand new disease. I felt that, as someone trained in infectious diseases and immunology, this disease existed just for me. So I did something bold, even a bit reckless. I shifted my entire career direction. What does this mean? And what exactly was this brand new disease he was referring to? It was AIDS. In 1981, a new disease was discovered in the U.S., then called gay-related immune deficiency, which later became known as AIDS. At the time, the medical mainstream thought it was just an immune issue linked to a certain lifestyle and wasn't a widespread threat. Since it mostly affected gay patients, they thought it wouldn't cause public panic. It certainly wasn't worth shifting an entire field for. But Fauci felt this disease was meant for him, and he had to take on the challenge. As the head of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at the time, he recklessly shifted the entire lab's research focus toward this unknown, mysterious illness. So on May 6th of that year, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, often called a Bible of Medicine, he published an editorial titled, Could AIDS Be Transmitted Through Routine Household Contact? Spread? In the editorial, he stated that perhaps even more significant was the possibility of routine close contact. For instance, contact within the same household could potentially spread the disease. If that were true, AIDS would take on a whole new dimension. You have to understand, at that time, America was already terrified by this mysterious illness, scientifically known as gay-related immune deficiency. Young gay men were falling ill one after another. Newspapers and TV were filled with photos of patients covered in purple spots. A medieval-like panic seemed to hang over American cities. In such an environment, for a high-ranking NIH official to write in the most prestigious medical journal that routine household contact might spread AIDS, well, you tell me. It was like throwing a match into a vat of boiling oil. The next day, the Associated Press ran a front-page headline, Could AIDS Be Spread by Routine Contact?, citing Fauci as the ultimate authority. The following day, United Press International published an article, Household Contact May Transmit AIDS. The New York Times, Role of Household Contact in AIDS Transmission, studied. All of them were citing Fauci's article. Imagine the consequences, everyone. Within 48 hours, panic swept across the country. Children of AIDS patients were expelled from schools. Parents forbade their kids from talking to classmates who looked gay. Many AIDS patients were evicted by their landlords. Some hospital staff even refused to enter the rooms of AIDS patients. And in hindsight, we know that the HIV virus that causes AIDS isn't spread through routine household contact at all. It's only transmitted through blood, bodily fluids, and sexual contact. At the time, a pediatric AIDS expert named Ari Rubinstein, who published in the same journal as Fauci, had already specified in his paper that infant infections were transmitted through As a top expert, according to journalist Randy Schiltz in his classic AIDS History and The Band Played On, Fauci didn't even finish reading Rubinstein's paper before he turned Rubinstein's conclusion of maternal-fetal blood transmission into a new version of possible transmission through routine contact in an editorial. This is a chilling start. Fauci supporters say he only amplified the risks back then to raise public awareness of AIDS. His motives were good. But his critics say this wasn't science outreach at all, but a textbook case of fearmongering. Fauci understood Washington's survival rules all too well. Without panic, there's no budget. On this issue, was Fauci acting out of a doctor's compassion or an ambition for fame and fortune? Friends, if you think it's the former, type compassion for me. If you think it's the latter, type ambition. Let's see how you all judge this. Due to the national attention from this editorial, AIDS, a strange disease seen as a fringe issue in 1981, became America's most high-profile public health crisis just a year and a half later. A year later, the position of director of the NIAID became vacant. At that time, looking across the entire NIH, almost no one was more qualified than Fauci to take that seat. He had already established himself as the government's spokesperson on the AIDS issue. From then on, the NIAID's budget began an upward curve that hasn't dropped in decades. In 1987, HIV was isolated and the U.S. was in a frenzy for an AIDS cure. On March 20th, the FDA, with unprecedented speed, took only 25 months from lab proof to official approval to rush through the first anti-AIDS drug in human history. A to Z, Zitovudin. The story of A to Z is quite unique. It was invented in 1964, originally as a cancer drug, but it was abandoned because it was too toxic at the time. It sat in a warehouse for 20 years. In 1985, a British company called Burroughs Welcome re-synthesized it for HIVers, and the price of A to Z after its launch was a figure that made people gasp. Each patient spent $8,000 a year. Those were $1989, about $17,000 today. It became the world's most expensive drug at the time. Its side effects were also very severe. Patients suffered from severe anemia and bone marrow suppression, needing frequent blood transfusions, and it caused intense intestinal distress. Some patients didn't die from HIV, but from the toxicity of A to Z. So what role did Fauci play in this A to Z matter? He repeatedly, actively, and vigorously promoted A to Z in the media. In every TV interview, in every press conference, he was the scientific endorsement for A to Z. It was he who made all of America and even the whole world believe that it was effective, that it was worth it, and that it was necessary. By 1989, Burroughs Welcome's annual gross profit from A to Z alone reached $230 million. Wall Street predicted at the time that this drug would continue until the mid-1990s, and with this one product alone, annual sales could reach $2 billion. Many AIDS patients paid the exorbitant price of $8,000, endured the severe side effects, and died before a better drug could come out. It was also here that Fauci once again gained repeated exposure in the media through A to Z, transforming from an obscure research bureaucrat into a household name in America as an AIDS crisis warrior. This was his first public coronation, but at the same time he was being crowned, a group of people also hated him intensely. These people were the AIDS community, and one of them was named Larry Kramer. He was a playwright. In 1981, seeing his friends fall one after another, he founded Gay Men's Health Crisis. In 1987, he founded ACT UP, an AIDS advocacy group that influenced America for 30 years. In the eyes of ACT UP, Fauci was the embodiment of bureaucratic indifference. They felt the FDA's clinical trial process was too slow, taking 7 to 8 years for an effective drug to reach the market, while patients couldn't last 7 months. They felt the NIH's drug selection priorities were completely messed up, with 11 out of 24 candidate drugs not even in trials yet. They felt the person responsible for all of this was this refined Dr. Fauci, who always wore a suit and always represented science before the White House and the media. So that front page open letter from 1988 we mentioned at the beginning appeared, and that wasn't even the most intense part. On May 21st, 1990, two years after the open letter was published, ACT UP launched an action that the NIH still remembers today. Codenamed That day, over a thousand AIDS activists from across the country swarmed the NIH headquarters in Bethesda. They surrounded the NIH headquarters and staged a performance art piece called A Die-In on the Lawn, with rows of people lying on the grass to simulate the deaths of AIDS patients. They carried props shaped like coffins with Fauci's name on them, marching around the NIH headquarters. Some people printed Fauci's name on wanted posters and plastered them all over the campus. This was the first time Fauci, then the 47-year-old director of the NIAID, faced a nationwide trial of public opinion. But he made an unexpected decision. He invited the protesters inside. He didn't call the police to clear them out, didn't have the FBI open a case, and didn't go on TV to denounce these anti-science mobs. He walked out of the building and sat down with the protesters, listening to them. Then he invited the smartest and most rational young people from AC2U into the NIH conference room. He gave them advisory roles, invited them onto the drug trial design committees, and let them help decide which drugs to test first, which later, and which patients to enroll first. Friends, what do you think of this approach? Do you think Fauci truly cared for the patients and listened, or was he wearing a mask for political co-option? Let me know in the comments. At least from a political standpoint, the results were formidable. After Fauci invited those young people from AC2U into the NIH, the political impact was massive. The organizer, Kramer, even became good friends with Fauci. When Kramer later fell seriously ill and needed a liver transplant, Fauci personally admitted him to the NIH for treatment. Before Kramer passed away in 2020, he publicly stated many times that Fauci was a good man. Kramer even wrote a play later on. The protagonist's name was Anthony Della Vita, which means Anthony, God of Life. And this character was based on Fauci. This is true. As for Fauci, he learned his most important political lesson from this battle. Never go head-to-head with protesters. Bring them in, and they'll become your most powerful bargaining chip for more money from Congress. So for 30 years, from 1990 to 2020, he used this tactic to win over Washington. AIDs, he won. Anthrax attacks, he won. SARs, West Nile virus, Ebola, swine flu, Zika, every time, he won. Seven presidents all asked him to stay on. He became the supreme pope of American medicine. In 2008, President George W. Bush even personally awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. By the time he retired in 2022, his annual salary was as high as $480,000, making him the highest paid federal employee in the U.S. Everyone watched him rise to the top and host grand banquets. But few noticed that beneath this impeccable mask of the medical pope, the power monster he had nurtured had swollen to an uncontrollable degree. The first signs came from Fauci's own mouth. More and more frequently, on TV, before Congress, and at press conferences, he said, I represent science. I represent science. Administratively, he was the director with a $10 billion research budget and final say. Academically, he was the authoritative head of national biosafety labs. Morally, he was even that frontline doctor personally changing bandages for infectious patients. He wove medicine, power, and morality into a perfect, untouchable loop. He's the most political in the medical world, yet the most medical in Washington's political circles. This extreme overlap of identities allows him to always remain invincible before different groups. Politicians question him. He says, I'm a scientist. Scientists question him. He says, I'm an administrator. Both sides question him. He says, I just changed the medicine for an infectious patient. These three masks have forged his untouchable spirit in Washington. So over 30 years, this statement gradually underwent the most terrifying transformation. From I represent science, it slowly became opposing me as opposing science. Finally, it inflated into I am science. In 2012, he was commenting on an academic paper published in the authoritative microbiology journal, Mbio. In that commentary, he personally defended gain-of-function research, which is research using genetic modification to make viruses more dangerous. He wrote, even if a scientist accidentally gets infected with a virus in the lab and triggers a pandemic, the benefits of such research and the scientific knowledge gained outweigh the risks. Friends, think about this sentence. Doesn't it send a chill down your spine? In 2014, the Obama administration decided to fully suspend federal funding for any gain-of-function research that could enhance viral toxicity, transmissibility, or lethality. But Fauci wasn't having it. He wasn't willing to let his 30-year research empire shrink because of this ban from the Obama administration. So that year, a $3.4 million NIH research grant bypassed the United States, went through a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance, flew across the Pacific, and landed in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The gears of fate got stuck right there. How did this grand drama of deception, personally set up by Fauci 12 years ago, evolve into a global disaster of the century in the days that followed? In yesterday's show, we spent 25 minutes giving you the most complete breakdown of this 12-year dark timeline. So friends who missed it must go watch it. I put the link below the video. This Brooklyn boy who learned at age 10 to read the person at the door within 30 seconds ultimately read everyone in Washington's power maze and won everything. He even asked for a preemptive pardon from the president of the United States before his exit. But a pardon might help him Anthony Fauci's masked life has already come to an end, but his true reckoning seems to have just begun. All right, that's all for today. Fauci is a very controversial figure. Friends, what do you want to say? How do you evaluate his past? Discuss with me in the comments. I'll read every single one. I'd also like to thank the many friends who donated to yesterday's show. Your support is my greatest motivation to keep making great content. And please give me a like after watching. 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