I was a bit older then and remember the irrational media calling it "the gay cancer" or "the gay plague." This was absurd as diseases don't reason and thus know who is or isn't gay. It didn't make sense.

The incident you refer to was one individual, Larry Speakes. He stepped into the job when the press secretary was shot. The reporter who questioned him called it the gay plague and the press present laughed at that. At the time the reporter noted 600 known cases in the entire country. It had no official name and almost nothing was known about it, including it's severity.

Speakes said he didn't know about it and that the administration didn't know about it. But the budget for research into figuring out this disease was $8m or $13,333 per known case. How can they budget for research on something nobody heard of? Speakes was talking out his ass and had no idea what he was talking about. His job was press briefings and clearly on this he was uninformed. But note how the media representatives thought it was funny as well.

Sadly at the start little was known and in public you had comedians such as Eddie Murphy and Andrew Dice Clay publicly ridiculing it. Very few took it seriously even in the LGBT community. But so little was known for many it was the only response they could give. My response was confusion over the nature of the disease but not humor. I lost several friends to it who took risks even after they knew how it was spread.

The one remark by Speakes is the only one I know about. I can't say there aren't more as anything is possible but it's the only one I know about.