That is a fucking lie. You could only say the Reagans started "a national conversation" about AIDS if terrified, desperate, and dying people screaming "WHY AREN'T YOU SAYING OR DOING ANYTHING ABOUT AIDS!" at the Reagans counts. It does not count.

The Guardian:

Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004, was president for nearly five years before he said the word “Aids” in public, nearly seven years before he gave a speech on a health crisis that would go on to kill more than 650,000 Americans and stigmatize even more. In recent months, published reports have revealed an administration that laughed at the scourge and its victims and a first lady who turned her back on Rock Hudson, a close friend, when he reached out to the White House for help as he was dying from an Aids-related illness. “If there is a hell both Ronny and Nancy are Roasting,” wrote one Sister.... “Nancy and Ron Reagan were a functional team in the Presidency,” wrote Kenneth Bunch, aka Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch, one of the order’s co-founders. “They are both responsible for the death of thousands from HIV in the LGBT community due to their inaction in the 1980’s. So I understand the anger in the LGBT community toward Nancy. I feel that anger as well.”

Hillary Clinton needs to walk this back immediately or she risks losing the votes of millions of queer Americans who survived the plague years. We watched our friends and lovers die by the tens of thousands while Nancy and Ronnie sat silently in the White House. More than 20,000 Americans died before Ronald Reagan could bring himself to say the word "AIDS" in public—because it was a "gay plague" and Nancy and Ronald Reagan didn't give a flying fuck about sick and dying faggots. I'm literally shaking as I try to write this. There are no words for the pain Clinton's remarks have dredged up. I'm supposed to be writing a column—it's way overdue—but all I can think about are all of my dead friends and lovers, lovely guys who might still be with us if Nancy and Ronald Reagan had started a national conversation about HIV/AIDS. Or done something about it. Millions of men and women all around the world were condemned to death as a direct result of the hateful silence of the Reagan White House. Millions more will die.


You want to say something nice about Dead Nancy Fucking Dead Reagan on the TV? Compliment her taste in china. Don't go on television and lie about her and her husband's homophobic, hateful, appalling, murderous record on HIV/AIDS. Just don't.

Want to see the kind of conversations they were having at the Reagan White House about HIV/AIDS? Watch this video:

Listen to them laugh. Listen to them fucking laugh.

UPDATE: WaPo: "Hillary Clinton apologizes for praising Nancy Reagan’s response to HIV/AIDS."

Here's Hillary's statement:


Here's mine: Not. Good. Enough.

And what he said:


UPDATE 3: Can't say I agree with what this guy had to say either:

“No matter your party or political ideology, this is a sad day for America. Nancy Reagan was an exemplary first lady. A devoted partner, she was her husband’s most trusted advisor and, as such, served our country well. Even after her time in the White House, she was an outspoken advocate for stem-cell research to find a cure for Alzheimer’s. Nancy Reagan had a good heart, and she will be dearly missed.”