The Nuge and his wife
Ted Nugent is unapologetically partisan. The Motor City Madman has been pro-gun, which you might guess from his live show, in which he shoots a guitar onstage with a flaming arrow. Yet he’s been even more outspoken about politics, defending apartheid, calling former President Obama a psycopath and saying that he and Hillary Clinton should suck on his machine gun.
That’s over the line, no? However, in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, The Nuge appeared on WABC’s “Curtis & Eboni” radio show and urged everyone to tone down the hateful rhetoric. Mediaite reports on the kinder, gentler Nugent.
“I cannot and I will not and I encourage even my friends/enemies on the left in the Democrat and liberal world that we got to be more civil to each other,” Nugent stated. “The whole world is watching America where you have the God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And we have to be more respectful to the other side.”
He added, “I’m gonna take a deep breath, and I’m gonna back down. And if it gets fiery, if it gets hateful, I’m going away and I’m not gonna engage in that hateful rhetoric anymore.”
It would be interesting to see if he’d be making the same call had it been a democrat that got shot. Would he have felt bad had it been Obama or Hillary that was shot? Debatable, but he did apologize for wishing any harm on them:
“I’m not trying to make excuses, but when I made those wild ass comments on stage against then-Senator Hillary Clinton and then-Senator Barack Obama, I don’t know if you can grasp the degree of adrenaline and intensity and over-the-top animal spirit and attitude that I live on stage,” he said. Nugent added that he now has to take a “deep breath” and focus his energy on music. “I will avoid anything that can be interpreted as condoning or referencing violence,” the Nuge noted.
He says that it was his wife that convinced him that he’d gone too far. Is it that, or perhaps the fact that Donald Trump is in office now that made him change his mind? Either way, good job Ted, we still don’t forgive you for calling our last President a “subhuman mongrel.”
