Clinton tweeted an apology to her followers, saying she “misspoke” about the Reagans’ “record on HIV and AIDS”.
Advertisement
Still, many lawmakers have brushed all aside to simply pay homage to the former First Lady and all she seemed to stand for.
She died Sunday at age 94.
Inseparable in life, the pair were to be reunited in death in side-by-side graves at Ronald Reagan’s presidential library.
Celebrities and other people on Twitter are speaking out about the situation.
However for many in the LGBT community Nancy Reagan is a deeply problematic figure and to some in the HIV community even one of our greatest foes.
Earlier in the day, Clinton, in Simi Valley, Calif., to attend Reagan’s funeral on Friday, gave an interview to Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC and cited the former first lady’s advocacy.
He said that his mother, cognizant of Ronald Reagan’s passion for working on his ranch, once asked what she could do to help.
“If she thought somebody didn’t have her husband’s interest in mind, she nixed them”, he said.
“Already, some said that Ronald Reagan would be remembered in history books for one thing beyond all else: He was the man who had let Aids rage through America, the leader of the government that when challenged to action had placed politics above the health of the American people”.
“It is the silence of tens of thousands who died alone and unacknowledged, stigmatized by our government under his administration”. Activists such as ACTUP and many in the affected community were openly critical of how the Reagan administration responded to the crisis, which ranged silence and willful inaction, to openly mocking anyone who questioned their lack of response.
The funeral started at 11 a.m. PT and was closed to the public.
Advertisement
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. When he was turned down because he was not a French citizen, Hudson sent a personal request to the White House, asking for intervention at the diplomatic level to get him into a French hospital. There are no words for the pain Clinton’s remarks have dredged up. Yet the comment by Clinton – whose record on LGBTQ rights is also questionable (she opposed marriage equality until 2013) – started a national conversation in its own right on Friday, as people expressed outrage on social media. Nancy Reagan was buried next to her husband on the library grounds.
