While Anthony Fauci was deciding what to tell 330 million Americans about COVID, he was keeping a diary. Here's some of what he wrote.

On visiting a hospital: "The nurses went absolutely wild to see me. They were squealing and laughing and clapping."

On his press coverage: "Many print profiles and features on me. Ridiculous — too numerous to count."

On himself: "I'm such a valued spokesperson and a good communicator."

This is the personal journal of the man who told us to follow the science. The science, apparently, included tracking how many magazine covers he could land.

Bill Maher got hold of these entries and read them aloud on HBO's "Real Time" last night. His comparison was unsparing: "Releasing the diary, it is the most embarrassing public releasing of anything since Anthony Weiner put out a picture of his d*ck next to a baby."

That's Bill Maher — the man who spent most of the pandemic defending lockdowns and mocking anyone who questioned the official COVID narrative. When he starts comparing Fauci's private writings to the scandal that ended a Democratic congressman's career and sent him to federal prison, something significant has shifted.

Maher didn't stop at the embarrassment. "He is just so susceptible to flattery," he said. Then the sharper knife: "This kind of stuff is dangerous, because he was having his a*s kissed by one side in the debate, and I think he made decisions based on that."

The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was making public health decisions based on which political faction stroked his ego. A liberal comedian just said that on national television.

And then there's the entry that should have been front-page news.

Sen. Rand Paul, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, highlighted a diary entry from August 2022 in which Fauci documented that officials chose not to admit the vaccine wasn't stopping the spread of COVID. The reason wasn't medical. They were worried it might "undermine the DoJ's efforts at mandates."

Read that again. Government officials knew the vaccine wasn't stopping transmission. They sat on it — and the stated reason was protecting the Department of Justice's legal case for forcing people to take the shot. "That is not science," Paul said. "That is a cover-up to justify coercion."

Fauci has now pleaded the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times in congressional testimony. The "I am the science" guy suddenly can't remember the science.

The Fauci defenders still have their talking points — dedicated public servant, saved millions of lives, partisan witch hunt. Those work considerably better when a liberal comedian isn't reading your diary on television and comparing it to a sex scandal.

His own diary is the prosecution's star witness.

He spent four years insisting he was the picture of transparency. He spent his private hours writing about nurses squealing at the sight of him and counting his press mentions. A man who keeps that kind of journal while deciding whether to tell the public the truth about vaccine efficacy didn't get ambushed by his opponents.

He got ambushed by his own pen.