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.

 

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate