Hillary Clinton outraged LGBT activists on Friday with her comments at Nancy Reagan’s funeral praising the former first lady for helping start a “national conversation” about HIV – remarks that critics say ignore the Reagans’ deeply troubling legacy on the 1980s Aids crisis.

“It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/Aids back in the 1980s,” the Democratic frontrunner told MSNBC in an interview at the funeral, which was held at the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, California.

Hillary Clinton appears on MSNBC to discuss Nancy Reagan’s legacy

Clinton continued: “Because of both president and Mrs Reagan, in particular Mrs Reagan, we started a national conversation when before nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it, and that, too, is something that I really appreciate. With her very effective, low-key advocacy … it penetrated the public conscience and people began to say: ‘Hey, we have to do something about this too.’”

As controversy began to swirl over her comments, the Democratic frontrunner issued a swift apology:

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

Her comments in the interview flew in the face of how many longtime gay rights activists view the Reagans – as a couple who deliberately turned a blind eye to the Aids crisis, with devastating and deadly consequences.

Advocates in the San Francisco Bay Area – who survived the epidemic and had watched friends and loved ones die in great numbers – consider the Reagans, through their inaction, responsible for the death of thousands of LGBT people.

As the Guardian recounted in a history of the Reagans’ dark legacy on HIV, the Reagan administration long refused to take seriously growing concerns in the LGBT community about the disease.

Dr Marcus Conant, a clinical professor of dermatology emeritus at UC San Francisco and one of the first physicians to diagnose and treat Aids, recalled the Reagans’ dismissal of his concerns.

In one meeting, Reagan’s representative brushed aside claims about the infectious disease, Conant recalled: “Her response was [that] this was a legal problem, not a medical problem,” Conant said. Simply because of who gay men with Aids were and who their sexual partners were, the representative told him, “these people were breaking the law”, apparently a reference to anti-sodomy laws of the time.

Recent reports have shed light on many examples of this insensitive and harmful response. The administration laughed at victims and Nancy Reagan herself turned her back on Rock Hudson, a close friend, when he implored the White House to help him as he was dying from an Aids-related illness.

Gay rights activists said they were shocked by Clinton’s comments Friday.

Cleve Jones, a longtime San Francisco activist, who created the Aids Memorial Quilt, wrote on Facebook: “Hillary Clinton is praising Ronald and Nancy Reagan for “starting a national conversation” about HIV/AIDS. Utter bullshit. Disgusting. Really, just stop it.”

Clinton has secured a number of endorsements from high-profile LGBT groups – but they haven’t yet directly weighed in on the controversy.

Chad Griffin, president of LGBT nonprofit Human Rights Campaign, which is backing Clinton, tweeted, “While I respect her advocacy on issues like stem cell & Parkinson’s research, Nancy Reagan was, sadly, no hero in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”

Charles Kaiser, author of The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America, said, “This is shameful, idiotic, false – and heartbreaking. There is nothing else to say about it.”

As she continues her primary battle with Bernie Sanders, Clinton has attempted to overcome what critics see as her own questionable legacy on gay rights, with opponents noting her very recent support of marriage equality and Bill Clinton’s passage of the Defense of Marriage Act, which barred federal recognition of same-sex marriages.