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Ted Nugent to Attend State of the Union With Stockman

Musician Ted Nugent will attend the State of the Union address Tuesday night with U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman. On Monday, Nugent said "this administration cannot be trusted to do the right thing."

By Maurice Chammah, The Marshall Project
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Rock musician Ted Nugent, an outspoken gun rights advocate who once said President Obama could "suck on my machine gun," will be a guest of U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Friendswood, at Obama's State of the Union speech Tuesday night.

“I am excited to have a patriot like Ted Nugent joining me in the House Chamber to hear from President Obama,” Stockman said in a statement. “After the Address I’m sure Ted will have plenty to say.”

Nugent had plenty to say ahead of the speech, where he will be available to news outlets to respond to the president's comments. Calling Obama a "master scam artist" Monday, Nugent said the speech will be all "smoke and mirrors."

Obama's rhetoric "sounds so sweet and so righteous and so desirable, but unfortunately his actions speak much louder than his words," Nugent said. Responding to Obama's recent proposal to prevent gun violence in the wake of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Nugent said that "nothing recommended would have stopped any of the shootings, would have saved one life, or would have protected one innocent person."

Nugent has said that those who advocate gun control should instead focus on mental health and keeping criminals in prison. "We have a mad-man problem in America, where they’re running around," he told Piers Morgan on CNN last week. "We have a felony recidivism problem in America. Let’s focus on that together, and leave the rest of us [gun owners] alone.”

Nugent said his disagreements with the Obama administration transcend the gun issue, criticizing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's actions regarding an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's handling of the Fast and Furious program. "This administration can not be trusted to do the right thing," Nugent said. "It's just a flagrant, disingenuous parade of ideas and deceptions."

Shortly before Obama was re-elected last November, Nugent was interviewed by the Secret Service after he said he would end up “dead or in jail” if Obama won the election.

Stockman has been fiercely critical of Obama himself, saying last month that he would consider backing an effort to impeach the president if he tried to use executive action to institute new gun regulations.

His office said he will unveil a 10-foot-long billboard called "The Obama Failometer," which will use federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data, "mathematically weighted," to measure on a scale from 1 to 1000 "just how badly Obama’s economic policies are failing." The inaugural score is "off the charts," they said, at 1,179. The billboard will be displayed in the corridor outside of Stockman's Washington office.

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