Fauci wrote in upcoming memoir that Trump yelled expletives at him in a phone call in 2020

WASHINGTON —Dr. Anthony Fauci wrote in his upcoming memoir that former President Donald Trump went into an expletive-filled rant with him during a phone call in 2020 but at the same time said he loved him, the New York Times reported.

The phone call came during the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump, then the president, would downplay the effects of COVID-19 and repeatedly attacked Fauci for the guidelines he set forth to the public in navigating the virus.

In his memoir, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service,” Fauci wrote that during the call Trump “was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him” and dropped F-bombs, according to the New York Times and the Daily Beast.

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“He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse,” Fauci wrote. “He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country ‘one trillion dollars.’”

He added that, “I have a pretty thick skin, but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun.”

Republicans in Congress have floated a number of conspiracy theories involving Fauci related to the COVID-19 pandemic. During a House hearing earlier this month, Fauci defended himself against those allegations.

“Whenever somebody gets up, whether it's a news media – you know Fox News does it a lot – or it's somebody in the Congress who gets up and makes a public statement that I'm responsible for the deaths of X number of people because of policies or some crazy idea that I created the virus, immediately it's like clockwork – the death threats go way up," he said.

His memoir is expected to be released this month.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fauci wrote in upcoming memoir that Trump yelled expletives at him in a phone call in 2020