Hillary Clinton is walking back statements she made while eulogizing the late Nancy Reagan after her comments provoked widespread outrage. In an appearance on MSNBC on Friday during a televised funeral for the first lady, Clinton decided to highlight what she said was the Reagans’ AIDS and HIV activism. "Because of both President and Mrs. Reagan—in particular Mrs. Reagan—we started a national conversation,” she said, adding that Nancy Reagan’s "very effective low-key advocacy" for the disease was "something that I really appreciated." She added that the Reagans brought attention to the AIDS crisis when "nobody would talk about it."

Clinton faced swift backlash for the comments. Nancy Reagan, while a strong advocate for stem-cell research and finding treatments for other diseases like Parkinson’s, was hardly the AIDS activist that Clinton said she was. The Guardian reported that in 1985, Nancy Reagan refused to help close friend Rock Hudson while he was dying from complications related to AIDS. In 2003, Michael Cover, the former associate executive director for public affairs at Washington, D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Clinic, said: "In the history of the AIDS epidemic, President Reagan's legacy is one of silence. It is the silence of tens of thousands who died alone and unacknowledged, stigmatized by our government under his administration." A new documentary short by filmmaker Scott Calonico, When AIDS Was Funny, which debuted on VF.com in December, revealed never-before-heard audio tapes illustrating how Reagan’s then-press secretary, Larry Speakes, responded to questions about the epidemic with snickering and homophobic jokes.

In response to criticism, Clinton quickly issued a statement correcting herself. “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,” she said in a statement on Twitter. “For that, I’m sorry.”