Providing no clue on what steps he would take to do so, Donald Trump vowed to end AIDS in 10 years during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night.
Said Trump: “In recent years we have made remarkable progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Scientific breakthroughs have brought a once-distant dream within reach. My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years. Together, we will defeat AIDS in America.”
LGBTQ advocates were quick to remind Trump of his, and his VP’s alarming and destructive record on HIV/AIDS. in December 2017, Trump fired his entire Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS with no warning. He defunded NIH vaccine research efforts and his past budgets have also requested additional cuts in funding to fight HIV/AIDS that Congress has refused.
Vice President Mike Pence said in 2000 that he was in favor of sending money allocated to care for people with HIV/AIDS to organizations that provide gay conversion therapy, and this year failed to mention the LGBTQ community in his World AIDS Day speech for the second year in a row.
