Ted Nugent took the microphone ahead of Donald Trump at a packed midterm rally in Kansas on Monday night and, according to Raw Story, told the crowd that Democrats could be eliminated as a party, calling that “the goal” and branding them communists. Not long after, Trump stepped up and spent part of his own speech praising the 77-year-old Motor City Madman as an old friend, the Daily Beast reports.
For a guitarist who has spent more than a decade as one of Trump’s most loyal celebrity supporters, it was a familiar stage. For a lot of people watching the clips online, it was a line too far.
What happened in Park City
The rally was held at Heartland Credit Union Arena in Park City, on the northern edge of Wichita, in support of Republican Sen. Roger Marshall. The Kansas Reflector reported that the arena’s roughly 6,000 seats were about two-thirds full when Trump took the stage, and that Nugent was one of the warm-up speakers alongside seven Kansas Republicans running for office in November. The Reflector’s photographer caught Nugent posing for pictures with fans before he spoke.
Raw Story’s account of Nugent’s remarks is based on a video clip that circulated on X after the event. In it, Nugent says the Democratic Party could be eliminated, calls that the goal, and adds that he wants Democrats “out of here.” Raw Story described it as a thinly veiled threat, while conceding in the same piece that the comment “could be interpreted a number of ways.” Several commentators it quoted, including podcaster Hemant Mehta, read it as hostile rhetoric that Democrats are then expected to ignore in the name of unity.
The mainstream local coverage was far more muted. The Reflector’s rally report mentions Nugent only in passing and does not quote him at all, focusing instead on Trump’s defense of Marshall and his attacks on Marshall’s opponent.
Trump’s comments about Nugent come from the Daily Beast, which quotes the president calling him “a friend of mine from the beginning” and “a guy with common sense,” and adding that he is “smart as hell, actually.” The Daily Beast’s report is not entirely consistent about the setting: its text places the rally in Wichita while its own photo captions say Park City, and it says Trump mentioned watching Nugent perform on the same stage the night before. Neither Raw Story nor the Reflector mentions an earlier performance.
A long partnership
None of this is new territory for Nugent. He was a regular fixture of Trump’s 2016 campaign, warming up a Michigan crowd with the kind of stage antics that once belonged to his arena-rock heyday, and later performing the national anthem at a Trump rally in Lansing. In 2017 he was among the guests Trump invited to dinner at the White House, as Media Matters noted at the time, and Trump has publicly called him a “handsome devil,” according to Ultimate Classic Rock.
Nugent, for his part, has told Fox News there is “no limit” to what he would be willing to do to help the country, and has turned up at Republican events for years, often to the irritation of candidates who would rather the headlines be about them. His remarks have caused trouble for allies before: in 2014, Greg Abbott’s Texas gubernatorial campaign took heat for appearing alongside him after earlier comments about President Obama.
That is the pattern his fans and critics both recognize. Supporters see a rock star who never toned himself down to keep the industry happy. Critics see a man whose words keep landing on the wrong side of the line between rally theater and something uglier.
Why Kansas, and why now
The setting matters. Marshall’s Senate race against Democrat Adam Hamilton, a Kansas City-area pastor, has become one of the more surprising contests of the midterms. The Kansas Reflector reported that Trump spent much of his roughly hour-and-40-minute speech defending Marshall’s record, calling Hamilton a “disgrace” and a “radical left” candidate, and promising Kansas farmers relief on diesel costs. Hamilton’s campaign said the very need for a presidential rally showed Marshall was struggling. Protesters interrupted Trump at least five times.
Against that backdrop, a classic-rock star telling a Republican crowd that the other party should be done away with was always going to travel further online than anything said about diesel prices.
What happens next
Marshall and Hamilton are due to meet in a televised debate on Wednesday, October 21, and Kansas votes on November 3. Whether Nugent’s comments become a talking point in that debate, or fade as one more piece of rally noise, is likely to depend on how hard Hamilton’s campaign chooses to press it.
Neither the Raw Story nor the Daily Beast report included a response from Nugent. Given his track record, few would bet on an apology. For the guitarist who wrote “Stranglehold,” backing down has never been part of the act.
