by Anthony Polimeni
Anthony Polimeni: You have worked under many administrations, I mean, start at NIH in 1968. Tell me, in one word, your opinion on these presidents or opinion thought whatever you want to say.
Nixon.
Anthony Fauci: Well, I didn’t serve under Nixon. The 1st person I served under was Ronald Reagan. So I didn’t interact with him. I helped take care of him when he had pneumonia. But I didn’t interact with him in a way that I could comment.
Anthony Polimeni: Okay. So, Regan, then we’ll start.
Anthony Fauci: Well, you know, Reagan was a real gentleman. Again, I want to say right at the outset that, as you know, I mentioned the book multiple times. I’m not a political person. I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican, you know, when I don’t let any ideology get in the way of my job, which is health and medical medicine and science.
Reagan was a gentleman, a person who respected institutions, and a conservative but a very productive conservative. What he did, but my criticism was that he waited too long to come out and seriously discuss HIV Aids.
Anthony Polimeni: Bush Senior.
Anthony Fauci: Bush senior was one of my favorites. He was a man who was the ultimate gentleman, a person of another era, an absolutely bona fide war hero, you know, who was in government and everything, from a Congressman to a CIA director to a Vice President to President. He increased the resources for AIDS. All the activists and I think he could have done better. But he got the ball rolling, so I have a very positive feeling about him.
Anthony Polimeni: Clinton
Anthony Fauci: Well, Clinton opened the gates to the community. So I mean, that’s very, very clear. He did that literally from the time of the inauguration. You know, by getting a gay man to be able to speak at the at the at the Convention. So I mean, he really opened the door, and he did a lot of things scientifically, you know. He listened to me about putting together the vaccine research center, which has done a lot of work to get vaccines, particularly successful in developing a COVID-19 vaccine.
Anthony Polimeni: Bush Junior
Anthony Fauci: George W. is at the top of the list when HIV goes on.
PEPFAR. I mean, you know. He sent me to Africa and said to put together a program that’s feasible. That’s accountable, and that’s transforming. And I did. He bought it. He announced it at a State of the Union address, and 20 years later, it saved 25 million lives. So what I mean is you can say a lot of things about George W. That you don’t like. But you gotta love PEPFAR.
Anthony Polimeni: Yeah. And I, from my end, I’ve worked in HIV and kind of done a lot underneath of him. He did incredible.
Anthony Polimeni: His domestic policy is not the best, but his foreign was impeccable.
Anthony Polimeni: Obama.
Anthony Fauci: You know Obama again, one of my favorites. He was a highly intellectual guy with an incredibly engaging personality. I spent a lot of time with him because, by pure happenstance, his administration, 8 years worth, was punctuated by a lot of outbreaks.
I mean, the first few months of his presidency were the 2009 swine flu and H1N1. Then we wound up with Ebola and Zika. So I spent a lot of time in the situation room and in the Oval Office working with him, and he was a delight to work with.
Anthony Polimeni: Trump.
Anthony Fauci: Well, you know, my interaction with Trump is now very well delineated in the book. You know, at the beginning, the relationship was fine. We did well. He listened to what I said, but when the outbreak was not going to go away, which he desperately wanted it to do because he wanted to concentrate on the economy and getting reelected. He started to say things that were not true, and I was put in an uncomfortable position to preserve my own professional integrity and fulfill my responsibility to the American public. I had to publicly disagree with the President of the United States. You know, I’m still paying the price for that because it triggered a tsunami of hostility against me on the part of his loyal followers. So, that was a difficult relationship.
Anthony Polimeni: Yeah. And then Biden.
Anthony Fauci: You know Biden was phenomenal. Biden. You know, when I first started, he asked me to be the chief medical advisor. You know, I immediately said, yes, I knew him when he was a Senator. I knew him when he was 8 years as the Vice President. and he told me. We’re gonna tell the people the truth. We’re going to go with the science, you know. If we make a mistake, we admit it. And let’s go do our job, and he just was a man with great empathy to suffering, and that’s the reason why he was, you know, the right person for the job at the time.
The next question was about his thoughts on the new diabetes and the promising results so far. I asked him, “What are your thoughts on the new weight control medications like Wegovy? This new class of medications for weight control impacts a lot of aspects of health. Should we be cautious or excited about these new developments?”
Anthony Fauci: You use both the right words. You should be cautiously excited. No, I really do think so. I don’t think you should buy it, lock, stock, and barrel, but everything I see about the results looks good. I mean, not only for weight loss. You know it has an impact on addiction to alcohol, to cigarettes, to narcotics. It has a major effect on diabetes that has an effect. Now, we’re starting to see cardiovascular disease. So there may be negative long-term effects, and that’s the reason why I say cautiously.
Photos Courtesy of AS Fauci
