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Glenn's Show Prep

Ted Nugent flips out over calls for more gun control, misinformation

July 25, 2012
Wilson

Writer

Glenn spoke with fervent 2nd Amendment supporter Ted Nugent on radio today because Ted is fired up about all the misinformation being spewed on the media about current laws, assault rifles and more. What are they getting wrong? And what does Ted think is the answer?

Full Transcript below:

GLENN:  Let me go to Ted Nugent.  Jeez.  Another angry gun‑toting white guy. 

 

PAT:  Mmm‑hmmm. 

 

GLENN:  Ted? 

 

NUGENT:  Greetings, Glenn, from the greatest rhythm and blues rock‑and‑roll tour in the history of noise. 

 

GLENN:  Where are you today? 

 

NUGENT:  I'm in the swamps of Jackson, Michigan, cleansing my soul prior to heading for Wisconsin to continue the rock‑and‑roll celebration. 

 

GLENN:  Okay.  Now, do you have to cleanse your soul after Wisconsin? 

 

NUGENT:  I do it daily anyhow, whether I need it or not. 

 

GLENN:  Okay.  Just, I didn't know.  Some people just cleanse their soul on, you know, Saturdays or Sundays. 

 

NUGENT:  I wash my hair on Saturday. 

 

GLENN:  Okay.  Good.  Ted, you have been ‑‑ and I'm sorry that I haven't had a chance to return any of your phone calls this week.  It's been nuts because of the thing that we're doing this weekend, but you ‑‑ I believe you are close to a brain aneurysm on this story coming out of Aurora, Colorado. 

 

NUGENT:  Well, yes.  Number one, I can't go further without saying that the Nugent family and everybody I know, I mean literally everybody says prayers for the victims and their families in the face of such a tragedy, but now we need to go on to the vile intentional misrepresentation of what did happen.  And I think as soon as you can, Glenn, you need to talk to your friend Bill O'Reilly because I've never heard such nonsense in all my life and I think it epitomizes the ignorance out there when Bill O'Reilly states as a fact that anybody can go buy a bazooka and a machine gun without the government knowing it unless, of course, you're in the crips and the bloods.  My God in heaven, since 1934 machine guns ‑‑ by the way, bazookas are not available this week and they never have been. 

 

GLENN:  Really? 

 

NUGENT:  But to buy a machine gun, you have to go through such a vetting, such a federal BATF and local law enforcement, national law enforcement review, background check, fill out all kinds of documents and buy a $200 transfer tax certificate per purchase if they allow it.  So this kind of information is just looney.  And let me state as if fact that I know for a fact that most of the damage done by this devil in Aurora was done with the number one pheasant shotgun in the world, a Remington 870.  His AR‑15 Smith & Wesson rifle is now the most popular sporting rifle in America.  It is the number one competition, number one in self‑defense, it's the number one sporting rifle for big game and small game.  And if they keep calling it an assault weapon, I may have that aneurysm. 

 

GLENN:  You know why they call it that?  Because of the way it looks.  That's it.  Because of ‑‑ I was out shooting, what, two weeks ago and that's exactly ‑‑ that's the gun we were using.  And we were target practice.  I mean, that is the gun we would use.  If I was going hunting, that would be the gun that I would use. 

 

NUGENT:  Oh, and most sporters do but let me ‑‑ you talk about the way it looks.  Dianne Feinstein and her ‑‑ by the way, Dianne Feinstein who's just literally going berserk on the misinformation about the weapons and the ammunition.  This is the woman who had a concealed weapons permit but denied California citizens the right to have a concealed weapons permit.  She demonized the concept of concealed weapon permit when she had one, Glenn, and she sat in a room with a friend of mine who will remain unnamed, unidentified, a Democrat congressman from one of my favorite states and she took out a copy of shotgun news.  This is a publication that, you know, lists the different types of firearms available, legal firearms, and she got out a Sharpie and circled the ones she wanted banned in the original assault weapon ban and she circled ones that were black with folding stocks when, in fact, the exact same weapon, exact same rate of fire, exact same caliber, everything was the same but it was made out of wood.  She didn't want to ban those.  This is lunacy.  And remember, Glenn, this monster in Aurora took 20 minutes to do his evil.  In 20 minutes you don't need an assault weapon, you don't need a machine gun, which he didn't have either of, but you could do more damage with a single shot or a bolt action because he had 20 minutes. 

 

GLENN:  You know, here's the thing.  If ‑‑ and nobody I hear is talking about this except people like us:  If you had more people carrying a weapon.  If people had a gun in their back and they were ‑‑ and they were licensed to carry it, that guy wouldn't have gotten off more than four shots. 

 

NUGENT:  And I'm sure you've covered it because there was a shooting like that in a church in Aurora this year earlier. 

 

GLENN:  Yep. 

 

NUGENT:  That was stopped because the guy had a gun.  And I know the hysteria about teargas and it was dark in the theater.  Glenn, I am not making this up.  Last week my wife Shemane and I were filming a segment for our Spirit of the Wild show and we were shooting at watermelons surrounded by human silhouette targets just as kind of a competition and from 20 feet and from 20 yards and we were shooting from every imaginable angle, undercover, from sitting, from squatting, from prone position, from behind cover and from in the open, and we never hit an innocent and we never missed the watermelon.  And I'm just a guitar player.  If a guitar player can neutralize a watermelon from 20 feet ‑‑ and this is with live fire, by the way. 

 

GLENN:  Do you ‑‑

 

NUGENT:  We would shoot while the other would take the target shots.  So there was that tension of live fire.  And this was done in a scenario ‑‑ and I understand it wasn't real bullets coming at us and it wasn't people screaming, running around. 

 

GLENN:  Please. 

 

NUGENT:  But dear God in heaven, doing nothing is not an option.  Training, having a firearm to neutralize an evil gun maniac is a way to go, and we train for that.  And I wish is I would have been in the theater that day. 

 

GLENN:  So do I.  So do I.

 

NUGENT:  Glenn, I don't mean to monopolize here, but heroism, warrior action was performed that day by men who dove in the line of fire to save their loved ones.  They were a warrior but they were unarmed warriors. 

 

GLENN:  Look.  Ted, this is the same story over and over and over again, and you know as well as I do one of the safest countries in the world is Switzerland.  Because you're required to have an automatic weapon. 

 

NUGENT:  A real machine gun. 

 

GLENN:  Right.  You're required to have it.  Why?  Because they know.  The best way to defend ‑‑ why do you think Switzerland is never overrun?  Because they're all defended ‑‑ every home is defended by the people in the home.  And let's look at Chicago.  Play the audio from Chicago, will you, Pat?  Listen to this audio from Chicago.  And nobody's talking about this.  Here's a city that's got gun control out the wazoo. 

 

NUGENT:  It's a gun‑free zone. 

 

GLENN:  Yeah.  Listen to the audio here. 

 

VOICE:  Six people are shot within 15 minutes on the city's south side.  One teenager is dead.

 

REPORTER:  Nancy Lou is at area two police headquarters.  She has details.

 

REPORTER:  The city's homicide rate is up by about 39% so far this year.  Faith leaders called for a stop to the gun violence, and one pastor said bluntly, "We are tired of doing funerals."  Community activist Andrew Holmes is also urging local radio stations to stop playing gangsta rap music which he believes has only encouraged all this shooting and killing. 

 

GLENN:  Of course it has.  I mean, Ted, you know, does music affect people? 

 

NUGENT:  God knows it affects me, but in a beautifully positive way. 

 

GLENN:  Right. 

 

NUGENT:  And it does affect people negatively.  If you talk about crime and you celebrate crime and you glorify, you know, evil and criminal activity, yeah.  And it's been going on for years now. 

 

GLENN:  And nobody's talking about that.  Nobody on the ‑‑ nobody in the news.  They're talking about gun control, gun control, gun control.  I'm not talking about music control.  I'm not talking about movie control.  I'm saying, can you recognize that that plays a role?  Nobody ‑‑ you should be licensed.  You should be licensed to make a movie.  You should be licensed to make music.  How ridiculous is that? 

 

NUGENT:  It's all ridiculous.  Well, bottom line is Chicago is a gun‑free zone but Rahm Emanuel like Mayor Daley uses tax dollars from citizens who they force into unarmed helplessness to pay for their armed security detail.  This is unbelievable. 

 

GLENN:  Okay. 

 

NUGENT:  And more people should join the NRA. 

 

GLENN:  Okay. 

 

NUGENT:  More people should do their homework about real firearms and real legality of firearms and ammunition.  Everything reported about this shooter and his so‑called armor‑piercing ammo.  And remember, Glenn, they wanted to ban hollow points because it does too much damage.  Well, hollow points won't go through the walls because they're ‑‑ because they disrupt in the target.  There's so much inform ‑‑ misinformation out there that I pray to God you'll talk to Bill O'Reilly because his ‑‑

 

GLENN:  I'm on his show tomorrow night. 

 

NUGENT:  He's screaming that people can go to the local florist and buy a bazooka. 

 

STU:  (Laughing.)

 

GLENN:  Okay, Ted, let me change subjects real quick.  I would like you ‑‑ and just shoot me an e‑mail on this.  I want you to go to TheBlaze.com and I want you to read the story on the East River monster.  This is, there's three pictures of this thing.  Have you guys seen this on The Blaze yet?  There are three pictures of this animal that has washed up on shore from the East River and I ‑‑ and nobody knows what animal this is.  I don't ‑‑ and you know animals.  Maybe you'll know.  It is the freakiest looking animal I've ever seen.  You see that, Stu? 

 

STU:  I'm going there now, though. 

 

GLENN:  It's a freak ‑‑

 

NUGENT:  I will freak it out because I love freakish animals, especially with garlic and butter. 

 

GLENN:  No, you don't want to eat this one.  If you have any idea, maybe it's a dog?  But it's ‑‑ it doesn't look like a dog.  I mean, it has fingers. 

 

STU:  They had one of these that came out recently, though, and it was proven to be a fake, right?  I mean, I don't believe it.  The Montauk monster.  That's what it was.  And that one wasn't real. 

 

GLENN:  Well ‑‑

 

STU:  Right? 

 

GLENN:  I don't know.  I don't ‑‑ this looks pretty ‑‑ I mean, this is freaky looking. 

 

STU:  That is really, really ‑‑

 

GLENN:  Very spooky. 

 

NUGENT:  If you want to save strange animals, be sure you open a hunting season on them and then we will manage them for maximum productivity. 

 

GLENN:  Ted, thanks very much.  I'll talk to you soon, my friend. 

 

NUGENT:  Ytah, God speed, Glenn.  Carry on, my friend. 

 

GLENN:  Have a good rest of the tour.

Patriotic uprising—Why 90% say Old Glory isn’t just another flag

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

In a nation where the Stars and Stripes symbolize the blood-soaked sacrifices of our heroes, President Trump's executive order to crack down on flag desecration amid violent protests has ignited fierce debate. But in a recent poll, Glenn asked the tough question: Can Trump protect the Flag without TRAMPLING free speech? Glenn asked, and you answered—thousands weighed in on this pressing clash between free speech and sacred symbols.

The results paint a picture of resounding distrust toward institutional leniency. A staggering 85% of respondents support banning the burning of American flags when it incites violence or disturbs the peace, a bold rejection of the chaos we've seen from George Floyd riots to pro-Palestinian torchings. Meanwhile, 90% insist that protections for burning other flags—like Pride or foreign banners—should not be treated the same as Old Glory under the First Amendment, exposing the hypocrisy in equating our nation's emblem with fleeting symbols. And 82% believe the Supreme Court's Texas v. Johnson ruling, shielding flag burning as "symbolic speech," should not stand without revision—can the official story survive such resounding doubt from everyday Americans weary of government inaction?

Your verdict sends a thunderous message: In this divided era, the flag demands defense against those who exploit freedoms to sow disorder, without trampling the liberties it represents. It's a catastrophic failure of the establishment to ignore this groundswell.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

Labor Day EXPOSED: The Marxist roots you weren’t told about

JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Contributor | Getty Images

During your time off this holiday, remember the man who started it: Peter J. McGuire, a racist Marxist who co-founded America’s first socialist party.

Labor Day didn’t begin as a noble tribute to American workers. It began as a negotiation with ideological terrorists.

In the late 1800s, factory and mine conditions were brutal. Workers endured 12-to-15-hour days, often seven days a week, in filthy, dangerous environments. Wages were low, injuries went uncompensated, and benefits didn’t exist. Out of desperation, Americans turned to labor unions. Basic protections had to be fought for because none were guaranteed.

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

That era marked a seismic shift — much like today. The Industrial Revolution, like our current digital and political upheaval, left millions behind. And wherever people get left behind, Marxists see an opening.

A revolutionary wedge

This was Marxism’s moment.

Economic suffering created fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. Marxists, socialists, and anarchists stepped in to stoke class resentment. Their goal was to turn the downtrodden into a revolutionary class, tear down the existing system, and redistribute wealth by force.

Among the most influential agitators was Peter J. McGuire, a devout Irish Marxist from New York. In 1874, he co-founded the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States. He was also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor, which would become the most powerful union in America.

McGuire’s mission wasn’t hidden. He wanted to transform the U.S. into a socialist nation through labor unions.

That mission soon found a useful symbol.

In the 1880s, labor leaders in Toronto invited McGuire to attend their annual labor festival. Inspired, he returned to New York and launched a similar parade on Sept. 5 — chosen because it fell halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

The first parade drew over 30,000 marchers who skipped work to hear speeches about eight-hour workdays and the alleged promise of Marxism. The parade caught on across the country.

Negotiating with radicals

By 1894, Labor Day had been adopted by 30 states. But the federal government had yet to make it a national holiday. A major strike changed everything.

In Pullman, Illinois, home of the Pullman railroad car company, tensions exploded. The economy tanked. George Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages for those who remained — yet refused to lower the rent on company-owned homes.

That injustice opened the door for Marxist agitators to mobilize.

Sympathetic railroad workers joined the strike. Riots broke out. Hundreds of railcars were torched. Mail service was disrupted. The nation’s rail system ground to a halt.

President Grover Cleveland — under pressure in a midterm election year — panicked. He sent 12,000 federal troops to Chicago. Two strikers were killed in the resulting clashes.

With the crisis spiraling and Democrats desperate to avoid political fallout, Cleveland struck a deal. Within six days of breaking the strike, Congress rushed through legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.

It was the first of many concessions Democrats would make to organized labor in exchange for political power.

What we really celebrated

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

Kean Collection / Staff | Getty Images

What we celebrated was a Canadian idea, brought to America by the founder of the American Socialist Party, endorsed by racially exclusionary unions, and made law by a president and Congress eager to save face.

It was the first of many bones thrown by the Democratic Party to union power brokers. And it marked the beginning of a long, costly compromise with ideologues who wanted to dismantle the American way of life — from the inside out.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Hunter laptop, Steele dossier—Same players, same playbook?

ullstein bild Dtl. / Contributor | Getty Images

The Durham annex and ODNI report documents expose a vast network of funders and fixers — from Soros’ Open Society Foundations to the Pentagon.

In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The truth behind ‘defense’: How America was rebranded for war

PAUL J. RICHARDS / Staff | Getty Images

Donald Trump emphasizes peace through strength, reminding the world that the United States is willing to fight to win. That’s beyond ‘defense.’

President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.

At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.

A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.

From ‘war’ to ‘military-industrial complex’

Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.

Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.

Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.

Peace through strength

When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.

Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.

The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.

Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.

That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.

Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.

Names matter

When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.