When Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show, she said that VA scandal “not been as widespread as it has been made out to be.”

The turmoil within the Department of Veterans Affairs, Clinton explained to Maddow, was a real problem, but it was being used to further political agendas within Congress.

“Now nobody would believe that from the coverage you see, and the constant berating of the VA that comes from the Republicans, in part in pursuit of this ideological agenda that they have,” Clinton said. “They try to create a downward spiral, don’t fund it to the extent that it needs to be funded, because they want it to fail, so then we can argue for privatization.”

But it was Clinton’s last statement that has her in hot water with veterans. “I don’t understand why we have such a problem, because there have been a number of surveys of veterans, and, overall, veterans who do get treated are satisfied with their treatment.”

One of the reasons that the VA is under investigation is because hundreds of thousands of veterans have died before receiving any treatment from VA hospitals, and that’s just the ones who never made it off the backlog. When veterans aren’t just languishing on a waiting list for years, their appointments are abruptly canceled, their names are moved onto fake lists and their records are shredded and/or put in a dumpster.

Clinton may be right when she says veterans who receive treatment are “satisfied,” but that leaves out all the veterans who aren’t lucky enough to see a doctor at all.

Since Clinton spoke on the show, veterans groups have responded to her comments with confusion and indignation. Paul Rieckhoff, founder and CEO of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, called Clinton’s statement “a head-scratcher.”

“That is not a winning argument — or factually correct,” Rieckhoff said.

Concerned Veterans for America accused Clinton of also using the VA for her partisan agenda. “Hillary Clinton has shown that just like the Obama Administration, of which she was a part, she will minimize the deep-rooted problems within the Department of Veterans Affairs and engage in partisan attacks against those who propose real and fundamental reform,” the group stated.