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Following Hillary Clinton’s controversial remarks in which she praised Nancy Reagan’s HIV efforts and subsequently apologized, the White House on Monday pointed to how she “quickly realized the error” and issued a clarification.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest made the remarks in response to a question from the Washington Blade on whether President Obama had a reaction to Clinton’s remarks or the apology that followed.

“I’m not sure that he had any sort of specific reaction,” Earnest said. “Obviously, Secretary Clinton quickly realized the error that she had made and she put out a statement clarifying what she meant.”

Earnest also said the incident presented Clinton with “an opportunity to make a forceful case about what sort of policy decisions she would make to ramp up the fight against HIV and AIDS.”

Clinton articulated her vision for achieving an “AIDS-free generation” in an op-ed for Medium admitting she “made a mistake” in crediting the Reagans with starting a “national conversation” about the disease.

The White House spokesperson said President Obama shares the same goals Clinton articulated in her op-ed, which include increased funds for HIV/AIDS research and expansion of PrEP.

“Obviously, the president has spent a lot of time trying to put on policies to accelerate that effort during his thus far seven years in office,” Earnest said. “There certainly will be more work for the next president to do. And I think it may be another example of Secretary Clinton recognizing that we made important progress in fighting HIV and AIDS, but that what we need to do is we need to build on that progress, and it sounds like that’s what she is proposing to do.”

Although Clinton has apologized for the remarks, she has yet to say why she made them in the first place. The Washington Blade has placed interview requests with the campaign, but thus far there’s been no response.

Earnest said he doesn’t know why Clinton made the remarks in the first place, referring the Blade to the Clinton campaign.

Nancy Reagan was an advocate of stem cell research as a means to cure Alzheimer’s disease, Earnest said, but he added he’s unsure “if that led Secretary Clinton to inadvertently mix up those two afflictions or not.”

“The president has obviously talked appreciatively about how Mrs. Reagan was an outspoken advocate of stem cell research and additional medical research that could lead to fighting Alzheimer’s, and Mrs. Reagan did that based on her own personal experience with that terrible disease and that the fact she was willing to stand up and speak out to try to prevent other families from going through what they did, I think is an admirable thing,” Earnest said.

Following the controversial remarks, both Clinton and Bernie Sanders took the opportunity to come out against state laws criminalizing the perceived transfer of HIV. Earnest said he didn’t immediately know whether Obama opposes those statutes.

The president’s National AIDS Strategy, first issued in 2010 and updated in 2014, contains passages against HIV criminalization laws, saying state legislatures should “ensure that they are consistent with current scientific knowledge of HIV transmission and support public health approaches to preventing and treating HIV.”

In 2014, the U.S. Justice Department issued guidance calling on states to reform the laws to eliminate HIV-specific criminal penalties except in cases of assault and when evidence shows an HIV-positive person clearly intended to transmit the virus.

The DOJ guidance says these laws, which exist in more than 30 states, “do not accurately reflect the current science of transmission, do not account for risk reduction behaviors and medical protocols that greatly reduce transmission risk, and do not reflect that, with testing and treatment, HIV may be a manageable medical condition.”