Ronald Reagan watched gay men die for six years and never said a f-cking word. His administration knew. His surgeon general begged to act. He deliberately let us die. The AIDS crisis killed over 20,000 Americans before Reagan said the word "AIDS" publicly for the first time. That was 1987. The epidemic had been raging for six years. Six goddamn years of funerals, of men wasting away in hospitals while their families were turned away at the door, of lovers burying lovers in their twenties, of a government that couldn't be bothered to give a shit. We know what was happening inside the White House because we have the transcripts. Press secretary Larry Speakes joked about AIDS with reporters in 1982. A reporter asked if Reagan was aware of the epidemic. Speakes laughed. "I don't have it, do you?" The room cracked up. Gay men were dying by the hundreds and the President's spokesperson was doing comedy bits. Reagan's surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, wanted to launch a public health campaign early in the crisis. Reagan's own people blocked him for years because the subject was too "controversial." Too controversial. A communicable disease wiping out an entire generation was too controversial to address because the victims were mostly gay. Reagan didn't just stay silent. His administration actively worked against the response. The CDC's budget requests for AIDS research were slashed. Public health officials were told to stay quiet. The word came from the top. Reagan was deeply tied to the religious right, and the religious right was gleeful about AIDS. Jerry Falwell called it "the wrath of God." Pat Buchanan, Reagan's communications director, wrote that AIDS was "nature's revenge on gay men." These were not fringe voices. These were people with offices in or near the White House. By the time Reagan finally gave a speech dedicated to AIDS in 1987, more than 20,000 Americans were dead. By the time he left office in 1989, the number was over 89,000. He never once visited an AIDS ward. He never met publicly with people living with the disease. The myth of Reagan as some kind of warm, genial grandfather figure has always been horseshit, but nowhere is it more obscene than when applied to his AIDS record. This was not a failure of leadership. It was a decision. Sick, dying gay men were politically useful to his coalition as objects of contempt. Keeping them that way was the point. Reagan left office with a 63 percent approval rating. He was celebrated as a hero of American conservatism. He got a national airport named after him. He got a f-cking aircraft carrier. And tens of thousands of people who should be in their sixties and seventies right now are in the ground instead, because the President of the United States decided their lives weren't worth a press conference. Remember that the next time someone tells you Reagan was one of the greats. He wasn't. He was a monster.