Ted Nugent: Secret Service to schedule meeting
Republican John Raese, left, listens as rock legend Ted Nugent plays the national anthem during a rally for Raese’s U.S. Senate campaign on Saturday, October 30, 2010 in Charleston, WV. Nugent will meet with Secret Service personnel to discuss his latest remarks concerning the Obama administration.
The “Motor City Madman” has added another date to his tour: one with the Secret Service.
Musician and gun-rights advocate Ted Nugent says he plans to meet with agents backstage before a show in Ardmore, Oklahoma, today to defend comments he made at a National Rifle Association meeting in St. Louis denouncing the Obama adminstration, according to Reuters.
Nugent, the 63-year-old rock star best known for his 1970s hits "Cat Scratch Fever" and "Motor City Madhouse," called the president, vice-president, and attorney general "criminals," according to Bloomberg. He also said that he would either be, "dead or in jail," if Obama was re-elected in November. He told his fellow NRA members, "We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November.”
Many Democrats were outraged by his remarks, which they construed as threatening. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, "Threatening violence — or whatever it is that Nugent's threatening — is clearly beyond the pale."
The rock star responded today by calling Schultz, "a Che Guevara fan," and "a Mao Tse-Tung wannabe."
The controversial rocker joined his "close, personal friend," Glenn Beck, on his radio show this morning to defend his statements. When Beck broached the subject, Nugent responded by emphasizing his commitment to nonviolence: "Every reference I made, whether it’s ‘a shot across the bow’ or ‘targeting the enemy,’ it always ended the sentence with ‘in November.’"
"The bottom line is," he continued, "I’ve never threatened anybody’s life in my life. I don’t threaten. I don’t waste breath threatening.”
However, Nugent did acknowledge during the interview that he had been contacted by the Secret Service regarding his comments, and applauded them for their thorough follow-up: "We actually have heard from the Secret Service, and they have a duty, and I salute them. I support them and I'm looking forward to our meeting tomorrow," in which he assured he would be as “polite and supportive as I possibly can be, which will be thoroughly."
Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie confirmed that the agency is, "aware of the incident," and is "taking appropriate follow-up,” according to the Associated Press. Oglivie declined to give any more details.