town. on that note, i wish you all are very good night. and a safe weekend. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late with us all week long. i ll see you on monday. ou on monday happy friday. so the year was 1996. president bill clinton was running for reelection. two years earlier, republicans have taken over the house of representatives for the first time in over 40 years. so democrats were focused on every single house seat they could possibly win back. one seat they had their eye on was in southern california. it was their candidate for that seat, speaking at the 1996 democratic convention. see if he looks familiar. it s a great honor to be here tonight. and i m proud to be carrying the clinton gold banner for san diego s 49th congressional district. make no mistake, there are big differences between we, democrats, and our opponents. and together, with president clinton, we will protect medicare and social security, and a wom
hollywood star rock hudson went public with his aides diagnosis. the revelation on one of hollywood s most masculine stars was hiv positive. and other reporting that he was gay filled newspapers for weeks. for a lot of the country, it was when the aids crisis got a face, as a hollywood friend turned to president ronald reagan and his wife nancy, there was also hope that hudson revealing his diagnosis might help get government assistance for the epidemic. we now know, thanks to reporting from buzzfeed news, the day before hudson went public with his diagnosis, he made a private, desperate plea to the reagan white house, via telegram, asking him to get access to experimental medical treatment. in france. that plea ended up in front of nancy reagan. she turned him down. he died nine weeks later. reagan wouldn t even mention the word aids publicly until september of 1985. and it wasn t until two years later in 1987 that reagan actually gave a speech about the epidemic. but at that point, i