April 18, 2012

The Time Ted Nugent Shot Guns With the Secret Service

 

Today, the Secret Service confirmed that it will interview right-wing shock rocker Ted Nugent in connection with his comments at last week’s National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis.

This does not appear to be the first time that the Secret Service has expressed an interest in the Nuge. At the NRA’s 2005 conference in Houston, I witnessed Nugent bragging about getting harassed by President George W. Bush’s security detail. “I kept getting these phone calls from the Secret Service,” he said, wearing fatigues and standing in front of a “Don’t Tread On Me” banner on a small stage. “And I’m like, ‘Oh shit, what do I do now?'” He recounted that Secret Service agents eventually showed up at a BBQ at his ranch near Crawford, Texas. Nugent thought it was a raid. “I was running around,” he recalled. “I thought there was going to be a couple of guys pulling into the BBQ and shooting.”

Nugent expressed no qualms about engaging in a gun battle with the heavily-armed agents. “I said, ‘I’ve got a bunch of guys with McMillan assault rifles trained on the back of your head, so if this is a raid, you can just turn right back around.'”

But it turned out that the Secret Service had just stopped by to play target practice. Nugent said he set up bowling pins a few hundred feet away and took aim with a borrowed government rifle and pretended to shoot the director of Bowling for Columbine. “Before I shot, I went, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.’ Michael Moore! And I blew him up. Beautiful!”

It’s unclear whether Nugent had exaggerated or fabricated parts of this story, though the part about the Secret Service showing up at his ranch near Crawford seems plausible, given that George W. Bush often vacationed at his own ranch nearby. The Secret Service could not immediately be reached for comment.

“If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either dead or in jail by this time next year,” Nugent said at last weekend’s NRA convention. Or maybe he’ll end up shooting off a few more rounds with the feds.

 

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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