After coming under fire Friday for praising Ronald and Nancy Reagan for starting “a national conversation” about HIV and AIDS, Hillary Clinton apologized for the remarks.
“While the Reagans were strong advocates for stem cell research and finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, I misspoke about their record on HIV and AIDS,” Clinton said in a statement released shortly after Nancy Reagan’s funeral. “For that, I’m sorry.”
Hillary Clinton’s statement on her comments about the Reagans’ record on HIV and AIDS: pic.twitter.com/RtIs0zpJfk
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 11, 2016
After Clinton’s remarks, many pointed out that the Reagans were far from strong advocates for HIV/AIDS awareness.
President Reagan did not give a major speech about HIV/AIDS until almost six years after the Center for Disease Control first documented the disease, according to BuzzFeed.
The site also published documents showing Nancy Reagan declined her friend’s request to seek treatment for the disease in France. He died less than two months later.
If you meant to say “sunrise,” but accidentally said “sunset,” that’s an example of “misspoke.”
An entire paragraph-long narrative of Nancy and Ronald Reagan heroically breaking the silence over AIDS and championing the cause of fighting AIDS is not an example of “oops, I misspoke,” it’s a disgusting bit of historical revisionism and/or an example of shocking ignorance of actual historical events – memories that are still very fresh among many of us who lived through this terrible time, lost friends, and watched the ugly dehumanization and demonization of AIDS patients by right wingers, including some prominent ones inside the Reagan administration, chortling at the spectacle of thousands of gay men dying – because of course they were “deviants” who were being punished by God because they “had it coming.”
Tens of thousands died of AIDS while Reagan staffers literally laughed off questions from reporters, asking the reporters if they had the “gay disease.” More than 25,000 had died before Reagan even brought himself to mention AIDS. Remember ActUp and the slogan “Silence=Death?” Apparently Hillary didn’t.
Look, I’m glad she promptly apologized (even if the “misspoke” excuse seems a bit ridiculous…which it is) but I’m just gobsmacked that she could make an error of this magnitude with (dis)respect to the LGBT community.
http://kaivanshroff.com/2016/03/11/hillary-clinton-is-factually-correct-on-hivaids-comment/
I have to agree. This was ‘misspeaking’ on the level of her thanking Richard Scaife for his lifetime of support…
Yeah the author of that article hangs his hat on the fact that "Factually, Clinton is correct, the Reagan was the first POTUS to publicly acknowledge AIDS. "
Uh, yeah – it was only identified by the CDC in 1981. By the time Reagan got around to finally making a speech about it, 5 or 6 years had passed and tens of thousands of Americans had died. Profiles in courage…not so much.
No one—least of all me—said it was a profile in courage.
That is a straw man, because it has nothing to do with the story I posted a link for.