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n1 [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Intercept reports: [theintercept.com]

During an appearance on MSNBC this afternoon, Hillary Clinton credited President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, with starting a “national conversation” on HIV/AIDS.

[...] Clinton’s telling of HIV/AIDS history doesn’t align with the facts. President Reagan waited seven years to address the HIV/AIDS crisis, even as thousands of Americans died from the disease. Dr. C. Everett Koop, the administration’s surgeon general, said the president dragged his feet on the issue “because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs.” Koop said their position was that AIDS victims were “only getting what they justly deserve.”

In 1985 the Reagans’ friend Rock Hudson, then dying of AIDS, traveled to Paris in a desperate attempt to be treated by a French military doctor. As BuzzFeed’s Chris Geidner reported last year, Hudson’s publicist sent the Reagan White House a telegram begging for help in getting Hudson moved to a French military hospital where the doctor could treat him. Nancy Reagan personally saw and rejected the request.

After the story gained some attention on social media and online news sources:

At 4:24 PM EST, Clinton tweeted out a short statement walking back her praise for the Reagans, saying that she “misspoke” about their record on HIV/AIDS. The statement was similar to one tweeted around an hour and a half earlier by LGBT rights organization Human Rights Campaign (HRC) president Chad Griffin. The HRC endorsed Clinton without asking its membership list to approve of the endorsement.

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