On October 24, 2011, Republican Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign announced that Allbaugh, who served as campaign manger for George W. Bush successful 2000 presidential campaign, would serve as a “senior adviser” to Perry.

In a November 12, 2023 op-ed for the Marietta Daily Journal, Barr wrote, “Had Reagan faced President Barack Obama on Nov. 6, he almost certainly would have won. For virtually every element accounting for [Republican presidential candidate Mitt] Romney’s failure to connect with a majority of voters last week, Reagan’s genuineness, good humor, vision and optimism would have carried the day for the GOP. Fielding such a candidate to represent the Party in 2016 will greatly increase—not decrease—the chances that the 45th President of the United States will be a Republican. And fortunately for the GOP, there are a number of such potential candidates in its farm team—young Ronald Reagans ready to lead the country to a new Morning in America.”

In a June 28, 2023 op-ed for the Daily Caller, Barr wrote about a Supreme Court decision issued that morning which upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Barr stated, “By upholding Obamacare, the Supreme Court—a court nominally ‘conservative’ and supposedly ‘non-activist’—has driven the final nail into the coffin of limited government … Tragically, this foundation of sand on which [Chief Justice John] Roberts and his majority colleagues based their decision now takes on enhanced power as a basis on which the government will be able to seize freedom from the people … [2012 Republican presidential candidate] Mitt Romney has commendably asserted that if elected, his first priority will be to repeal Obamacare. Unfortunately, unless he simply declares that he will not enforce the laws of the land—as President Obama likes to do—it will be neither that simple nor that quick. Obamacare is now the law of the land and it has the Supreme Court’s seal of approval to back it up.The damage truly has been done, and we will not soon—or perhaps ever—undo it. Thanks, Chief Justice Roberts.”

In July 2008, Barr called former Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC)—who famously and fiercely opposed the creation of a national Martin Luther King Jr. Day—“one of the finest, most courageous and deeply principled men to ever serve in the United States Congress.”

In a January 25, 2023 op-ed for The Patriot Post, Blackwell wrote, “As conservatives, we can take the winning message of economic liberty, family values, and strong defense into minority neighborhoods and share our hopes and dreams with new supporters in churches and synagogues. The current administration is the most hostile to religious liberty in our history … And we know from disillusioned administration insiders that the only concern President [Barack] Obama has for our all-volunteer military is for radical social experimentation.” Blackwell was making reference to the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in 2011.

In a January 15, 2024 open letter to former Secretary of State General Colin Powell, Blackwell wrote, “I was disappointed with the clear implication in your Meet The Press interveiw [sic] that those of us, in the GOP who defend life, protect traditional marriage and advance religious liberty are intolerent [sic]. The Democratic [National] Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina… came out against marriage. They say they only want to add to the number of happily married couples by allowing men to marry men and women to marry women. But we know that wherever these counterfeit marriages have been recognized, true marriage declines … Just as counterfeit money drives out true money, same sex marriage drives out true marriage. … President Obama has refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and pledges to repeal it. He has openly joined the Marriage Enders. They're not changing marriage. They are ending it. If two men can marry, why not three? If gays and lesbians can marry, what about bi-sexual persons and persons who have sought to change their sex? Why can't they have one spouse of either sex? After slavery, after Jim Crow, after the KKK, it is fair to say that among the worst things visited upon black Americans have been the targeting of our families by abortionists and the effort to end marriage. That is why we are in a crisis. This is what happens when a major party rejects God.” Blackwell was referring to Powell’s January 13, 2024 interview on “Meet the Press,” in which he stated that the Republican party is suffering from a “dark vein of intolerance” and that some in the party seem to “look down on minorities.” Blackwell was also referring to the platform at the 2012 Democratic National Convention (DNC) which originally did not include the word “God.” On September 5, 2012, Los Angeles Mayor and Chairman of the DNC Antonio Villaraigosa made a motion on the floor of the DNC to revise the platform to include the word “God.” Some delegates and journalists on the convention floor claimed that one could not audibly hear two-thirds of the delegates say ‘Aye.’ Villaraigosa nonetheless declared the amendment had been approved.

In an October 12, 2023 op-ed for American Thinker, Blackwell wrote, “Last month, President Obama had to call Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, to plead with him to protect the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. Morsi is a Muslim Brotherhood-backed leader. This is a country to whom the U.S. has given nearly $50 billion over the past three decades. We just approved another $1.5 billion in aid to what is said to be a ‘friend’ in the Mideast. Morsi grudgingly agreed not to let the Cairo mobs overrun the U.S. Embassy. International law regards our embassies as sovereign U.S. territory … We have exhausted our Treasury and we are no closer to Mideast peace. It seems that burning U.S. Embassies and murdered Americans dragged through the Arab street are what we are taught we have to tolerate in the interest of tolerance… We have tried gold. We're out of gold. Perhaps it's time to try fear … But if we have to fight, let's make sure we smash and dash. No re-building; no attempts to reform these failed states; no deluding ourselves that our mercenary friends will be loyal one minute after the money runs out. It's time America regained her self-respect.”

In an October 8, 2023 op-ed for the Patriot Post, Blackwell wrote, “The Obama Mandate will force us to violate our consciences. President Obama famously said he doesn't know when human life begins, but he's willing to force us to collaborate in the destruction of innocent human lives … President Obama doesn't care what you think, so long as you join him in helping to destroy the unborn on demand. And help him by paying for it … We are putting at risk America's unique contribution to the world: religious freedom.” Blackwell was referring to a January 2012 Obama Administration announcement that the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” requires employers to provide health insurance that covers contraception for women free of charge. The rule does not apply to church organizations themselves, but instead to affiliated nonprofit corporations, like hospitals, that do not rely primarily on members of the faith as employees. Additionally, the Act did not in any way alter existing, strict federal restrictions on the funding of abortion.

In a September 21, 2023 op-ed for the Patriot Post, Blackwell wrote, “The Democratic Party has officially committed itself to ending traditional marriage. For what else can happen to marriage when two persons of the same sex can marry and the rest of us are forced to recognize these counterfeits as true? If two, why not three? There is no compelling reason why not … Historian Michael Knox Beran found this nugget in Mr. Obama's second autobiography, The Audacity of Hope: ‘[I] came to appreciate how the earth rotated around the sun and the seasons came and went without any particular exertions on my part.’ What becoming modesty: earth, sun, seasons. Wait! Did he say the earth rotates around the sun? Yes, he did. Where is our ready-to-pounce press corps on this one? I don't know how they taught in fifth grade science in Jakarta, but here in America I learned that the earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun. This is no small point … President Obama has similarly mixed up the social science on family. His administration has given us ‘Julia.’ She is the Every Woman fictional figure who spends her entire life looking to government for assistance, from Head Start through Social Security. The only man in Julia's life is Barack Obama. Social science unambiguously reports that children thrive with mothers and fathers who are married and who worship regularly. President Obama's administration is not about that at all.” A Department of Health and Human Services report stated that children in nuclear families were “generally healthier, more likely to have access to health care, and less likely to have definite or severe emotional or behavioral difficulties than children living in nonnuclear families.” The study defines “nuclear family” as one that “consists of one or more children living with two parents who are married to one another and are each biological or adoptive parents to all children in the family.”

In a September 13, 2023 op-ed for the Patriot Post, Blackwell wrote, “In the dreary years of Depression and drift leading up to World War II, there was always a difference of perception between Britain and France about the Hitler threat. France wanted to strike Hitler when he marched into the Rhineland in 1936. This was a direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles [which ended World War I and imposed sanctions on Germany] and France felt its very life was threatened by a re-militarized Rhineland on her border. The French premier was invited to London by Prime Minister Baldwin—for talks. Four years later, France fell under the Nazi boot. Britain always had the advantage of distance from Germany. Britain had a 22-mile anti-tank trench called the English Channel. France naturally resented Britain's talking, talking, talking while Hitler moved. This is useful history as we view the situation in Israel today. The Iranian mullahs are motivated by the same anti-Jewish hatred that poisoned Hitler. They are developing a nuclear weapon, while claiming only to want nuclear energy for ‘peaceful purposes’ … [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton has responded to the latest increase of Mideast tensions with soothing bromides … [President Barack] Obama administration's Iran policy has been all hope and no change. The U.S. has bunker buster bombs that reportedly could destroy Iran's nuclear facilities as they take them deep underground. But would a re-elected Peace Prize winner ever use those bunker busters? Or, would he rely, as he is being daily urged to rely, on deterrence … When we permit [President of Iran, Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad…to visit New York and spew anti-Semitic hatred from the podium of the UN General Assembly, we may think we are showing admirable patience and forbearance; we may think we are demonstrating our liberal values to these dictatorial regimes. But they view this as a sign of our weakness. They are not deterred by weak-willed acquiescence. Hitler was genuinely surprised when Britain and France declared war on him in 1939 following his invasion of Poland. He had met Prime Minister Chamberlain and Premier Daladier at Munich and had taken their measure. He thought they would never carry out their threats. Nothing in the conduct of this administration's policy toward Iran has given the mullahs the slightest indication that President Obama and Sec. Clinton will actually use overwhelming force to stop their nuclear arms race.”

In a September 5, 2023 op-ed for the Daily Caller, Blackwell wrote, “The [Democratic] party was clearly embarrassed because its platform [at the Democratic National Convention] failed to mention God and overlooked the party’s historic support for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel … So now, the Democratic platform has been changed. Are we satisfied? Does anyone think that a party that has to be arm-wrestled into acknowledging God is sincere? What we saw on the convention floor in Charlotte was the real Democratic Party. It was hostile to religion.” The platform at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) originally did not include the words “God” or “Jerusalem.” On September 5, Los Angeles Mayor and Chairman of the DNC Antonio Villaraigosa made a motion on the floor of the DNC to revise the platform to include the word “God” and affirm Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Such action requires a two-thirds vote by convention delegates. Some delegates and journalists on the convention floor claimed that one could not audibly hear two-thirds of the delegates say “aye.” Villaraigosa nonetheless declared the amendment had been approved. Any delegate who objected to the process could have made a formal challenge within ten minutes of the vote. No formal challenge was made.

In a September 4, 2023 op-ed for the Daily Caller, Blackwell wrote, “Froward is admittedly an archaic word, but it’s a very good one. It describes what is actually happening in that Democratic platform with respect—or should I say with disrespect?—to marriage. ‘Froward’ is defined by the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary as ‘habitually disposed to disobedience and opposition.’ When Democrats convene today in Charlotte, North Carolina, to formally adopt their platform, they will be giving in to disobedience and opposition. Voters in the Tar Heel State strongly endorsed true marriage just last May. Like voters in 31 other states, the people are saying loud and clear: Don’t mess with true marriage. But the party bigs are defiant, determined to shove counterfeit marriage down the throats of the people.” Turning to the issue of minority voters, Blackwell stated, “North Carolina’s black voters backed true marriage by a margin of two to one … What can Democratic Party delegates in Charlotte be thinking? How can they imagine that ending marriage as we know it is a good posture to take in the teeth of such determined opposition from their most loyal group of supporters?” Blackwell was referring to a North Carolina constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between one man and one woman and banned the recognition of any other type of “domestic legal union.” The amendment was approved in May 2012.

In an August 28, 2023 interview with The Hill, Blackwell made references to controversial remarks made by U.S. Representative Todd Akin (R-MO). On August 19, 2012, Akin commented on the issue of pregnancy induced by rape, stating, “It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.” Later, Akin publicly stated that Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan had personally asked him to end his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also announced that even if Akin, who was trailing Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill in two recent polls, managed to pull even with her, "We're not going to send him a penny." Commenting on this imbroglio, Blackwell stated, "I think it was a mistake not to get the leaders in Missouri lined up before [GOP national leadership] went up and looked overly heavy-handed in the way they were pushing [Akin] … I've encouraged people at the Senatorial Committee to wait about five days and do a poll and see if things have stabilized. If things have, they might want to readjust. Senatorial committees can do anything. It is not as if some of the damage they've done can be papered over but they can reverse themselves on it."

In an August 24, 2023 interview on "Washington Watch Weekly", Blackwell stated, “President [Barack] Obama and his party want to transform our market economy into a government-controlled economy but most importantly, they are dead set on making sure that they transform our national philosophy founded upon the primacy of the individual and the supremacy of God to one founded on the primacy of the collective good and the supremacy of the central government. Our document, the GOP document, is a direct contrast; it provides the American people with a choice, not an echo. That is so important because there are two paths that we can go down: we can reinforce our fundamental belief that when we are God-centered, free men and free women and free markets can accomplish much and overcome most hurdles thrown in our way or do we want to go down the path of being a government-controlled economy, destroying families, replacing it with bureaucrat decision makers that would run afoul of what the founders of this nation envisioned 237 years ago … In our 237th year as being an exceptional nation we are at risk of losing it all. We just can’t afford to have four more years of a President that one, doesn’t understand the nature of our exceptionalism, and two, has a worldview and a set of guiding principles that are in direct contradiction with what has made us an exceptional nation. I’ve always enjoyed the push and pull of the whole process, I think it’s now incumbent upon us to make sure that this is not a document that is put on the shelf and our candidates across the country can just let collect dust and ignore. There is a fault line from the Pacific to the Atlantic and one side are those who believe in big government and who believe that the family and God can be replaced by a supreme state government, and that’s a problem.” The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibited the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”

In an August 24, 2023 op-ed for World Magazine, Blackwell wrote, “Happily, the Republican Platform Committee this week sidestepped the issue of civil unions. Committee members reaffirmed the party's historic support for true marriage. That's a good thing because, from the government's perspective, all our marriages are civil unions. And government has a duty to protect the civil institution of marriage. What some call a civil union-as a softer way to grant same-sex couples all the rights of marriage without the name of marriage-is merely a slow-motion surrender on the critical issue of marriage. Governments cannot sanctify marriage, but governments can and should protect the civil institution of marriage. True marriage … We have seen many examples of the ways in which defenders of marriage will lose their civil rights if marriage itself is abolished. If 61 percent of North Carolina voters last May had voted to end true marriage in that state instead of affirming it, we could have been sure that the very next semester schoolchildren in the Tar Heel State would have been proselytized in the early grades for the new definition of marriage. This is what happened in Massachusetts. When parents of public schoolchildren object, they will be the ones singled out for threats, ridicule, and possibly even government sanctions … Those who want to end marriage as we know it often cite the famed U.S. Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia (1967). In that case, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for a unanimous court when he struck down a state law that barred men and women from different races from legally marrying. We agree with that opinion. We, too, believe that marriage is a fundamental civil right of Americans. And we also agree with Earl Warren's view that true marriage is necessary for the survival of society. Chief Justice Warren did not have to say true marriage-between one man and one woman. It was understood. It must still be so understood. The civil rights of all Americans must be defended … Keeping marriage alive requires hard work. And it needs government support. What we are saying is that true marriage must survive for America to survive. We are saying preserve Americans' civil right of marriage if we want America to climb back from the abyss of economic decline and social decay.” On the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, Mildred Loving, one of the plaintiffs in the case, stated, “I believe all Americans, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry … I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”

In an August 20, 2023 op-ed for Huffington Post, Blackwell advised President Barack Obama to replace Joe Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate in the 2012 presidential election, stating, “Imagine if Hillary could be summoned from whatever international conference she's headed to. Envision her State Department jet being re-routed in mid-air for her to appear on the platform next to her onetime rival, just in time to let hubby [former president] Bill [Clinton] announce the new Obama-Clinton ticket to the world. Joe Biden could be put back on that State Department jet as the newly minted Secretary of State. Not a bad shown-the-door prize for the man who is forever stepping on rakes. Now, in all candor, we have already gone on record calling Hillary America's worst Secretary of State. But she couldn't be our worst vice president. As long as Joe Biden's around, that title is safe.”

In a July 13, 2023 op-ed for the Daily Caller, Blackwell wrote, “[President Barack] Obama announced on July 6 in Ohio that this election is about a ‘clash of visions’ about the role of government in our lives ... If he wins, he will claim a mandate and take federal power to heights we’ve never seen.” In reference to a June 28, 2023 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Blackwell stated, “We can no longer be confident that the Supreme Court will stop him. Liberty endures only when each branch fully and fearlessly checks and balances the other two branches. Abdicating judicial review empowers President Obama to subvert the Constitution with an imperial presidency, and fundamentally transform the United States to the detriment of future generations.”

In a June 19, 2023 op-ed for the Patriot Post, Blackwell wrote, “In 2010 [Director of the Center for Religious Liberty Ken Klukowski and I] published a book [“The Blueprint: Obama's Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency”] arguing that Barack Obama was creating an imperial presidency. The past few months prove that prediction was correct.” He continued, “The Constitution vests all lawmaking power in Congress. It vests all executive power to enforce and administer those laws in the president. And it vests all judicial power—including the power to determine whether lesser laws violate the Supreme Law (the Constitution)—in the courts … President Obama has arrogated to himself all of those powers. If Congress doesn't make the laws he wants, he just declares them under the name of ‘regulations.’ If he doesn't like a law on the books, he acts like the judiciary by proclaiming the law unconstitutional, and refuses to enforce it. He effectively makes or abolishes laws at will.” Finally, Blackwell warned, “This president has engaged in a series of unprecedented power grabs during his term of office. The past week's amnesty plan [for the American-born children of immigrants] is just the latest in a long train of imperial abuses. And he's done all this knowing he still has to stand for reelection. Can you even imagine how far he will go if he wins reelection and knows he will never again be held to account?”

In an April 26, 2023 op-ed for The Daily Caller, Blackwell wrote about “the secularization of Martin Luther King Jr,” stating, “So, since Rev. King and religion are inseparable, why are some people so quick to hide Dr. King’s religiosity? We would expect this type of careful ideological manipulation of history in the tyrannical states of the former Soviet Union or North Korea, but how does this happen in America? Sadly, I believe this is another example of how the secular left is winning the culture war. By driving religion out of the public square and re-writing the history books, they are erasing the invaluable role religion has played in our country’s history.” He continued, “By eliminating religion, the secular left is using the force of law to build its own type of warped, unholy church which is highly dogmatic and mandates participation under the threat of force … With the Obama administration’s openly hostile approach to religion, we have a government forcing members of religious institutions to participate in acts that violate their consciences, such as providing contraception and abortion services. All churches in Obama’s America are subservient to the whims of government bureaucrats, who are exercising power far outside the limits of our Constitution.” Blackwell was referring to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which requires employers to provide health insurance which covers contraception for women free of charge. The Act did not in any way alter existing, strict federal restrictions on the funding of abortion.

In a February 22, 2023 op-ed for the Patriot Post, Blackwell wrote, “The term ‘Southern Strategy’ was invented by liberals in 1968 to attack their partisan opponents in the Republican Party, then led by Richard Nixon.” In fact, it was Republican President Richard Nixon’s political strategist, Kevin Phillips, who popularized the practice. The “Southern Strategy” involved exploiting white racism against African-Americans to drum up Republican votes, and was first used by Nixon during the 1968 presidential campaign. Blackwell added, “We who defend true [heterosexual] marriage are equally committed to civil rights. We strongly believe that marriage is a civil right—and that overturning true marriage will cause grave harm to all Americans, not the least to the poor and to minorities.”

On September 22, 2023 it was announced that Blackwell, along with former Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle, would serve as the two vice presidents for the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA). Commenting on his selection, Blackwell said, “The NFRA is the flagship of constitutionalist conservatism within the Republican Party. It is intent on making sure the federal government has limited powers and the states have an independent sovereign place in our system of government. If we, the people, are to arrest the Obama march to collectivism, social democracy and an imperial presidency, we must swell the ranks of the NFRA and maintain its status as a principled defender of liberty.” One month later, the NFRA endorsed former Republican Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum for president in the 2012 election.

On August 2, 2011, Blackwell commented on the resolution of the debt ceiling crisis, writing, “The only thing being terrorized by tea partiers is the tyranny of the status quo.”

In Vol. 13, No. 1 of Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries published in January 2005, Cooper wrote, “The world scene is not so bright, since the nanny states do not seem to understand that it is the responsibility of the individual to protect himself and his family, in the absence of the state. We remain the last best hope of Earth, which would be a rather bleak prospect if it were not that we are now the one great super power. It is comforting, in a way, to observe the ineptitude of our world enemies. Our optimism is fortified by the understanding that we now alone cultivate the warrior spirit. It is not only permitted, but fashionable, for the individual citizen to possess the means and the skill with which to protect himself, his property, his family, and his political rights. There are cultural losers among us, but as of now they constitute a minority.”

In Vol. 12, No. 8 of Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries published in June 2004, Cooper wrote, “If you had only one personal firearm, what would it be? Now there is a subject worth discussion far too complicated for a simple answer. If you allow yourself two or three or even four individual instruments, the problem becomes much simpler, but it depends finally upon your lifestyle and your political position. Unfortunately, such matters are usually left up to the whims of unqualified bureaucrats, usually of the socialist persuasion, who regard the individual as a possession of the state, rather than the other way around.”

In Vol. 11, No. 6 of Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries published in May 2003, Cooper wrote, “The poodle shooter [the M-16 or M-4 rifle used by the U.S. military] seems to put the ragheads down in fairly satisfactory fashion, especially since the range in today's wars is short.” He went on to praise the May 1, 2023 speech of Republican President George W. Bush where he declared victory in Iraq by writing, “I think the gesture made by President Bush in landing on the carrier was excellent. George Bush is the most powerful man who ever lived on the face of the Earth, and for him to use our fantastically potent air arm as a vehicle to demonstrate this gives me great pleasure. Also it annoys the ‘hate America’ people excessively, and this is always a good thing.” In the end, U.S. military forces did not withdraw from Iraq until December 2011.

In Vol. 10, No. 13 of Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries published in December 2002, Cooper wrote, “The world scene may be pretty bleak, but we certainly have a lot to be thankful for at home. With a serious president in the White House [Republican George W. Bush] and a [Republican] majority in both houses of Congress, our ship of state rejoices in a sound hand at the helm and fair winds aloft. Despite the general moral decline in our society, we still have great things to appreciate—the first of which is having been born on the right side of the Holy War. We have been reading up on Islam and discover that while Western Civilization is far from perfect, it is infinitely better in all respects than that which looms ‘East of Suez.’ We may need to clean up our act, but at least we are in the right theater.” Turning to the role of women in society, Cooper added, “Any homemaker who operates a satisfactory household must be plenty strong enough to handle all of her kitchen appliances and, therefore, certainly strong enough to manage a pistol. Perhaps the postmodern housewife does not operate a successful kitchen, but buys everything prefabricated in the supermarket.” Going back to Islam, he wrote, “The Moslems' idea of peace is the extinction of Christianity.”

In Vol. 7, No. 12 of Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries published in November 1999, Cooper wrote, “When our good friend and colleague [fellow NRA board member] Bob Brown was recently asked his age in the course of an interview, his reply was, ‘I am so old that I can remember when the Kennedys killed their women one at a time.’” Brown and Cooper were likely mocking an incident that occurred on July 16, 2023 when a plane piloted by John F. Kennedy, Jr. crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off of Martha’s Vineyard. Kennedy, along with his wife and sister-in-law, were killed. Cooper also wrote, “A ‘busybody war’ is one which is fought in order to straighten out the morals, ethics, practices or religion of another group of people. Defensive wars are morally justified, and we can even put down reasons for wars of conquest, but ‘nanny wars’ are disgusting. The American Civil War is an example of one, as is the Boer War in South Africa. In both these cases, the more powerful side fought basically for the purpose of changing the lifestyle of the other. Losers fight well in these busybody wars, as morally they should. What the invader thinks when he attacks to make sure that ‘those other people’ part their hair on the right side is not always easy to discover.”

In Vol. 4, No. 13 of Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries published in November 1996, Cooper wrote, “This is indeed a bad time for the Republic. We on the right have the issue of character available as our Sunday punch, and yet our party leaders decline to use it. You can't win if you don't fight.” He also wrote, “If machismo is lost, only money is left. One wonders if time may be ripe for a ‘male backlash’ such as suggested in Sir Henry Rider Haggard's famous novel ‘She.’ Those of you familiar with that excellent fantasy will recall that ‘the people of the rocks’ portrayed therein were a matriarchal society in which women made all the decisions and inheritance was traced entirely through the female line. According to the story, this procedure got totally out of line every second generation or so, and all the females except the very young were put to death. This seems rather extreme, but after all, the race portrayed was one of the ‘lesser breeds without the law.’”

In an October 23, 2023 op-ed for the Daily Caller, Cox wrote, “Few elections in American history have mattered more to the future of our gun rights than the one that will take place just two weeks from today … Just one vote on the [Supreme] Court is all that stands between the America our Founding Fathers established, and the America [President] Barack Obama and his gun-ban allies envision. If Obama wins a second term, he could nominate up to three additional anti-Second Amendment judges in the same mold as his previous two [Supreme Court] nominees, Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Obama’s new majority would then almost certainly erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights … Barack Obama’s vision for America is a nation that most of us would hardly recognize, let alone want to live in. And if re-elected, Obama will have the chance to make his vision a reality … It’s time to take our country back. It’s time to defeat Barack Obama.”

In a September 7, 2023 op-ed for the Daily Caller, Cox wrote, “So far this year, 369 people have been murdered in Chicago … [President Barack] Obama’s 2012 party platform makes it clear that if he wins re-election, he will work to bring the same, dangerous anti-gun policies that are destroying Chicago to cities and towns nationwide. For that reason, November’s election presents a clear choice between our Second Amendment freedoms and fundamental right to self-defense…and the murder and mayhem that Barack Obama helped bring to Chicago, but now wants us all to ignore.” The Democratic National Committee’s party platform states, “We recognize that the individual right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we will preserve Americans' Second Amendment right to own and use firearms. We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation. We understand the terrible consequences of gun violence; it serves as a reminder that life is fragile, and our time here is limited and precious. We believe in an honest, open national conversation about firearms. We can focus on effective enforcement of existing laws, especially strengthening our background check system, and we can work together to enact commonsense improvements—like reinstating the assault weapons ban and closing the gun show loophole—so that guns do not fall into the hands of those irresponsible, law-breaking few." Most of the crime guns recovered in Chicago are originally bought in Illinois. According to a 2008 to 2012 study by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, 45% of Illinois’ crime guns come from one county within the state, Cook County. Chuck’s Gun Store, in Cook County, supplies approximately 20% of the crime guns in Illinois. Roseanna Ander, executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, said that the data “suggests a key strategy in keep guns off the street is for law enforcement agencies to target the local gun stores most likely to sell firearms to straw purchasers.”

In a June 28, 2012, interview with NRA News, Cox spoke about a vote in the House of Representatives to hold U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal contempt for refusing to comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents related to the “Fast and Furious” gun trafficking investigation on the southwest border. Cox stated, “The truth is, we’ve talked a lot about our dislike of Eric Holder. There’s no surprise that we think there’s something there … We believe, and have every reason to believe, that this was all part of their agenda to undermine the Second Amendment … I can assure you that Eric Holder’s contempt for the Second Amendment is the only thing that probably is stronger than Congress’ contempt for Eric Holder … We called for Eric Holder’s resignation over a year ago … But the best way to deal with Eric Holder, the best way to deal with these problems, is to defeat this president in November and to get some new people in there that have a little bit of common sense, a little bit of law enforcement background, that is legitimate, and that won’t be used to pursue a political agenda.” A report released by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General on September 19, 2023 found that there is no evidence that “Fast and Furious” was part of a broader conspiracy to advance new gun regulations. The report also found that there is no evidence that Attorney General Eric Holder was aware of the tactics used in the investigation until after it was concluded in 2011.

In an April 17, 2012, interview with NRA News at the 2012 NRA Convention in St. Louis, Cox stated, “This is a different kind of election. This isn’t a normal election. This is going to be the toughest fight of our lives…losing is simply not an option … We know what [President Barack Obama’s] campaign strategy is. They’re gonna tell people for the next six months that nobody’s guns have been banned, that the president supports the Second Amendment. It’s a lie .” He continued, stating, “This is about economic freedom. It’s about religious freedom. It’s about constitutional freedom and the most fundamental of all of ‘em is your ability to defend the rest, which is the Second Amendment. And it’s at risk. It’s in play in this election. And we simply can’t afford to lose it.”

In a November 15, 2023 op-ed for the Daily Caller, Cox wrote about the November 6 presidential election, stating, “As long as dedicated patriots continue to band together and fight as though freedom itself is on the line—because it is—we will defend the Second Amendment in [President Barack] Obama’s second term and save it for generations to come. For gun owners, the next four years won’t just be the fight of our lives, it will be a fight for the future of our nation. We’re ready to lead the charge.”

In a September 7, 2023 op-ed for the Daily Caller, Cox wrote, “So far this year, 369 people have been murdered in Chicago … [President Barack] Obama’s 2012 party platform makes it clear that if he wins re-election, he will work to bring the same, dangerous anti-gun policies that are destroying Chicago to cities and towns nationwide. For that reason, November’s election presents a clear choice between our Second Amendment freedoms and fundamental right to self-defense…and the murder and mayhem that Barack Obama helped bring to Chicago, but now wants us all to ignore.” The Democratic National Committee’s party platform states, “We recognize that the individual right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we will preserve Americans' Second Amendment right to own and use firearms. We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation. We understand the terrible consequences of gun violence; it serves as a reminder that life is fragile, and our time here is limited and precious. We believe in an honest, open national conversation about firearms. We can focus on effective enforcement of existing laws, especially strengthening our background check system, and we can work together to enact commonsense improvements—like reinstating the assault weapons ban and closing the gun show loophole—so that guns do not fall into the hands of those irresponsible, law-breaking few.” Most of the crime guns recovered in Chicago are originally bought in Illinois. According to a 2008 to 2012 study by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, 45% of Illinois’ crime guns come from one county within the state, Cook County. Chuck’s Gun Store, in Cook County, supplies approximately 20% of the crime guns in Illinois. Roseanna Ander, executive director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, said that the data “suggests a key strategy in keep guns off the street is for law enforcement agencies to target the local gun stores most likely to sell firearms to straw purchasers.”

In the May 2012 issue of America’s 1st Freedom, Cox wrote, “If you’re like me…you’re disgusted by what has come out of the White House in the last three years. It’s not just [President Barack] Obama’s false claim of supporting the Second Amendment, whether to win election in 2008…or to dupe voters in electoral battleground states today. It’s also the repetitive, arrogant disregard for legal and traditional limits on presidential power.” Cox concluded, stating, “Together our ballots will help decide whether…election day 2012 goes down in history as the day we reaffirmed our belief that America is different, and ended the failed Obama experiment once and for all.”

On April 14, 2012, in a speech at the NRA Convention in St. Louis, Cox stated, “Friends, I know why President [Barack] Obama pays so little attention to the law. He thinks he’s above the law … He seems to think he’s the king of all three branches. How’s that for arrogance, folks?” Later, Cox referred to a discussion President Obama had with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in which he told Medvedev he would have “more flexibility” to deal with contentious foreign policy issues, such as missile defense, following the November 2012 elections. Cox quipped, “In other words, ‘cut me some slack Dmitry. Once I con these annoying voters into reelecting me in November, I can do whatever I want.’” Cox then warned the audience, “The stakes of this year’s election couldn’t be higher … Freedom is what’s at stake and it’s what we’ll lose if we fail. Let us cling to our firearms…with every fiber of our being.”

On April 30, 2011, in a speech at the NRA Convention in Pittsburgh, Cox “revisit[ed] some words from [his] political dictionary.” The first of those words was “jack-ass,” which Cox attributed to HBO talk show host Bill Maher, stating, “We will never stop fighting for the Second Amendment or the Constitution which also protects his First Amendment right to be a complete jack-ass.” The second was “hypocrite,” which Cox attributed to filmmaker Spike Lee, who had criticized the NRA for their violent rhetoric following the attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords in Tuscon, Arizona. Cox noted that in May 1999 Lee stated that [Former NRA President] Charlton Heston should be shot. “It was Charlton Heston who opened up Hollywood so African Americans like you could become millionaires,” Cox said. “Instead of running your mouth, why don’t you just do the right thing and say, ‘Thank you Mr. Heston.”

Turning to the topic of the United Nations, Cox warned, “At the United Nations, freedom-hating governments are working to eliminate firearms ownership around the world and here at home. You’ve seen it on our southern border. Narco-terrorist violence is being exploited. Corrupt government officials and gun ban groups are using Mexico’s problems as an excuse to ban guns. And if that’s not bad enough, Mexico just announced they want to sue American gun companies. Their drugs and violence are flowing across the border into our country, but they’re suin’ us? If anything, we should be suin’ them.” Cox was referring to a U.N. Small Arms Treaty which would set only international standards for the export of conventional weapons—leaving domestic laws regulating the possession of firearms untouched.

Cox went on: “But it’s not just attacks from abroad. Here at home, they’re worming their way into our children’s classrooms. Teaching that guns are evil, hunting is cruel, and the freedoms and traditions we cherish the most are wrong or outdated or to blame for all the world’s problems. You all know who’s funding it. Billionaire puppeteers like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and globalist banker George Soros. We all know they’re not goin’ away and neither’s their money. Folks, there’s a lot goin’ on, there’s a lot at stake, and we don’t have much time. So, I’ll say it without apology. We need your help. We need more members and we need more resources. Here’s why: President [Barack] Obama’s already launched his reelection effort. He kicked it off to get a lead on raisin’ money. They’re sayin’ he could be the first presidential candidate in history to spend more than a billion dollars … What do you lose if Barack Obama wins? Well, you tell me. What if he appoints just one more anti-gun justice to the U.S. Supreme Court and we go from one-vote victories to one-vote defeats for generations to come? What’s that cost? My friends, praying for the health of five Supreme Court justices is not a strategy you want to stake your freedom on. Because, once it’s lost, freedom can be almost impossible to reclaim.”

On May 15, 2023 in a speech at the NRA Convention in Charlotte, Cox asked the audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, did you ever have the memory of some event in your life sneak up on you out of nowhere, smack you in the face and make you cringe with regret because you wish you had done something different? Now, I’m not talking about college indiscretions. I’m talking about Election Day 2008 [when President Barack Obama was elected president]. I bet a lot of people look back on that day and wish they could turn back the clock.” He continued, stating, “Every pro-gun leader you elect and anti-gun politician you defeat means fewer bad laws and more good laws. Good laws that make us all safer and prove that we're right, the gun-haters are wrong, and they need to keep their hands off our safety and our freedom ... That’s important, because every time we reduce fees, extend the length of your permit, or expand where you can carry can mean the difference between life and death. Self-defense reform is real health care reform.” He warned, “Look at what these politicians are doing. To pay for things we didn't ask for, can't afford, and don't need...they're scrapping things we can't live without ... When all this hits the fan and the politicians want cheap, easy answers, guess whose guns they're gonna come after? Yours and mine.”

On May 16, 2009, in a speech at the NRA Convention in Phoenix, Cox stated, “The sanctity of the Second Amendment, all of our rights, all of our freedom, is in your hands. Freedom calls you to her defense now more than ever before because she's under attack like never before.” This was because of the appointments/confirmations of Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief-of-Staff, Eric Holder as U.S. Attorney General, and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Cox explained. “We all know what to expect from our opponents,” he said, “They exploit tragedies. But to be honest with you, I never thought they’d pick an international tragedy. And as you've seen— that's exactly what they're doing with Mexico ... It’s been estimated that 100,000 Mexican soldiers have deserted the military in recent years to go work for the cartels. This is Mexico's problem. But the media and anti-gun politicians want us to believe that one more American gun control law or some international agreement will turn these ruthless murderers into boy scouts. You have got to be kiddin' me! We need to find 'em, arrest em', and send em' with the rest of the terrorists to Guantanamo Bay. Oh yeah, I forgot, that would be too ‘cruel.’ We should welcome them with open arms into our neighborhoods.” Cox warned, “Friends, these threats are real. Americans are concerned, and they're buyin' guns. So let’s give credit where credit’s due: In these tough times, the Obama administration deserves credit for the only part of the economy that’s goin’ strong—gun sales.” Finally, Cox told a story that “sums up the sorry state of affairs in [Washington,] D.C.”: “It’s 2006. Melroy Cort [an Iraq War veteran who had both legs amputated] and his wife are driving from their home in Ohio to Maryland. They drive through Washington, D.C. to get there. Melroy has a valid Ohio [concealed handgun] permit and he's carrying his 9mm in the car for protection. While driving through D.C., they get a flat tire, and pull over to fix it. Concerned, he takes his gun from the car and puts it in his jacket. Someone sees it happen and dials 911. Within minutes, the police show up and arrest him ... Now let me tell you a little something about D.C. If neighbors call 911 about some crack deal in progress there’s a 50/50 chance they’ll even send someone. But when a Marine Corporal –confined to a wheelchair because of his service to our country—strays into D.C. with his legally owned firearm they can’t put him in jail fast enough. And that’s our nation’s capital for ya. If you’re a gun owner, they put you in jail. But if you’re Mayor, and get caught smoking crack, they put you on the City Council.” The latter reference was to former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, who went on to serve on the D.C. City Council.

On the October 2, 2023 broadcast of “Cam & Company,” Edwards spoke about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney signing an Assault Weapons Ban into law in 2004, when he was governor of Massachusetts. Edwards stated, “This was actually a bill that the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL) in Massachusetts supported. The quote unquote ‘assault weapons bill,’ or excuse me, the quote unquote ‘assault weapons ban,’ was already law in Massachusetts. It was already permanent in Massachusetts. This bill actually provided some relief to gun owners in the state of Massachusetts. It was portrayed and it has been portrayed in the media as Governor Romney signed a bill to ban quote unquote assault weapons in the state of Massachusetts. But that's not the case. This was a bill, as I said, that was supported by the state gun owners' organization in Massachusetts because it actually undid some of the damage of that original legislation.” In fact, as Governor Romney’s press release announcing the signing of "An Act Furthering Regulating Certain Weapons" stated, “Like the federal assault weapons ban, the state ban, put in place in 1998, was scheduled to expire in September [2004]. The new law ensures these deadly weapons, including AK-47s, UZIs and Mac-10 rifles, are permanently prohibited in Massachusetts no matter what happens on the federal level.” While GOAL supported reforms to Massachusett’s gun licensing scheme contained in the legislation, the group stated in a July 2, 2023 press release, “Although the Governor did make mention of being a ‘sportsman’ and the reforms in the bill that would help other sportsmen, he spun the bill as a ban. ‘Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts,’ Romney said. ‘These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.’ When asked by a reporter if he supported the renewal of the federal ‘assault weapons’ ban and if he had spoken to the senators about it, Governor Romney replied that it was not really his job to lobby on federal legislation, but that he shared Senator [John] Kerry's and Senator [Ted] Kennedy's position on the issue!” Senator Kerry and Senator Kennedy supported renewing the federal assault weapons ban, which expired in September 2004.

On the May 22, 2023 broadcast of “Cam & Company,” Edwards spoke with National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) adjunct fellow Horace Cooper. NCPRR was founded one day after the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) disbanded its Public Safety and Elections Task Force, which was responsible for model voter ID and “Stand Your Ground” legislation. NCPPR promotes the implementation of voter ID laws at the state level in order to “enhance integrity in voting.” On the show, Cooper claimed that voter fraud is “a real problem” and that “felons, illegal immigrants, or just people who are paid to show up...go from one voting site to the next and cast votes in the names of other people.” Edwards agreed with Cooper and displayed a graphic which claimed that newly enacted voter ID legislation in Virginia “will ensure that voters presenting themselves at the polls are who they say they are, and greatly reduce voter fraud.” Cooper expressed NCPPR’s preference for voter ID laws similar to those in Texas and South Carolina, stating that these laws contain “grade A voter ID requirements.” Those laws have been challenged in court by the Department of Justice over allegations that they disenfranchise minorities. Furthermore, research has shown that in-person voter fraud of the kind Cooper warns about is extremely rare in the United States. Finally, in 2010, Cooper, a former Department of Labor official, pled guilty to falsifying a document after he failed to report gifts worth thousands of dollars which he received from convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

On June 8, 2012, Heil spoke at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event in Chicago on a panel entitled “Defending Self-Defense: The Liberal’s Shadow War on the Second Amendment.” According to Heil, there isn’t just a “shadow war” on the Second Amendment. “There’s a shadow war on SUVs, too. ‘The SUV went off the road and killed people,’ not the truck,” she mocked. Heil added, “I’d…like to thank the American Conservative Union for holding CPAC Chicago here in Chicago in Obama’s state of residence. I know a lot of you who are Illinoisans cringe at that, but you know what? That’s OK, because Illinois is the birthplace of Ronald Reagan.” Heil also spoke about her roots in Illinois, stating, “I hope that it really makes some people in Oak Park cringe that one of their home-born people is on the NRA Board of Directors … And also with [Northern Illinois University], they’ve turned anti-gun, of course, because of the tragedy there. But I graduated from NIU. I hope that makes some of those people cringe as well.” The tragedy Heil was referring to was a 2008 mass shooting at the school in which a mentally ill student (who was a legal gun purchaser) shot and killed five students, wounding 21 others, before killing himself. Heil also told the following story: “When I was a kid in Oak Park, that’s actually when they started their anti-gun nonsense because I vividly remember as a kid the Sinclair station on, is it Austin, and the Eisenhower … My dad used to get the gas tank filled up there and I vividly remember one of the workers there, after some of this anti-gun stuff started, having a gun on his hip while he was pumping the gas. That stuck with me. I wasn’t pro- or anti- as a kid, I didn’t know anything, but that’s a vivid memory. That’s one thing that that gentleman did that stuck with me and now I’m a member of the NRA board of directors. You never know what kind of impact just a little bit is going to have.” Referring to the 2000 “so-called” Million Mom March on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which was attended by approximately 750,000 people, Heil said, “Who would be against a bunch of moms wanting to protect their children? You know, that’s what they portray it. Well, they wanted to take away guns is their ultimate goal. And, you know, to counter that you would think of that young mother…just after New Year’s, she was a new widow and young baby. She had to use a gun to protect herself and she did everything she could to not do that, but in the end she had to use a gun to protect herself. The Million Moms would have disarmed her. They would have disarmed her.” In fact, there is nothing in the reform proposals advocated by the Million Mom March that would prevent law-abiding mothers from owning firearms. Heil also identified the following movies as “anti-gun”: “The Lorax,” “Lethal Weapon 3,” and “Lethal Weapon 4.” Finally, Heil warned, “You know and we know if the Second Amendment goes, the rest of everything else that we hold dear is going to go as well.”

On October 25, 2011, Innis described 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain as “an idea that was trying to be expressed for a long time by black America but was stifled by the left-wing establishment.”

In a January 9, 2024 interview on Brooklyn GOP radio, Keene spoke about President Barack Obama’s gun violence prevention task force. The task force, headed by Vice President Joe Biden, was formed in the wake of a mass shooting on December 14 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut in where 20 first-graders and six adults were shot and killed. Keene stated, “I think they're being disingenuous. I think that they've seen this as an opportunity to go after the Second Amendment, which they've wanted to do for years, if not decades, and I think they're going to do everything they can to strip Americans of their right to keep and bear arms … The whole battle over the Second Amendment has little to do with crime or any of these things. It has to do with culture and the view that different people have about what kind of a country this ought to be … It wasn’t until the culture wars of the late 1960′s, 70′s and 80′s that, all of a sudden, the Second Amendment became anathema to liberals who viewed it, really I think culturally, as a as symbol of an America they didn’t like, an America in which people took responsibility for themselves and for the protection of their families, an America which didn’t look to the state for the answer to all of its problems.”

In an October 4, 2023 interview with NRA News, Keene spoke about the administration of President Barack Obama, stating, “This is an administration that on many fronts and over many issues has committed many sins. Perhaps the worst, in a general sense, is their willingness to flaunt the law and the Constitution. You see it in little ways and in big ways. This is an administration where, if you don’t agree with them, if you don’t like President [Obama]’s position, then your rights are suspect anyway. They’re now doing it on the First Amendment, for Lord’s sake. They view the First Amendment and the Second Amendment in [the] very same way. These aren’t rights. These are privileges granted by government that can be restricted or taken away by government. So, now in the area of free speech, maybe you should only be free to say things that the Obama Administration agrees with or that our enemies agree with or that don’t offend anyone … This is perhaps the most institutionally dangerous tenancy that we’ve seen on the part of the administration—its willingness to flaunt the Constitution, ignore the law and then govern unilaterally through executive order and harassment of people they don’t like without any reference to what they should be doing in their proper role within a federal structure … This election is the most important of our lifetime because if this man is given four more years in the White House, he will do frontally what he’s been trying to do behind the scenes. Without the fear of having to face an electorate again, Barack Obama will come after the Second Amendment in many ways. There will be, if he’s reelected, a small arms treaty signed at the United Nations. He will have the opportunity to appoint one, two, three justices of the Supreme Court. Lord knows how many lower court judges. Combined, they can either restrict the [District of Columbia v.]Heller and McDonald [v. Chicago] decisions in such a way that they become meaningless or they can outright reverse them at the Supreme Court level. If that happens … America’s gun rights are at risk … If they have their way, those rights which you think are not only sacrosanct and which are sacrosanct, but which you think you’ll never lose could indeed be lost.” Keene offered no examples of ways in which President Obama is restricting freedom of speech. Keene also referred to a U.N. Small Arms Treaty which would set only international standards for the import/export of conventional weapons—leaving it to individual countries to “regulate internal transfers of arms and national ownership, including through national constitutional protections on private ownership.” Furthermore, such a treaty would require approval by two thirds of the U.S. Senate. Finally, Keene referred to the Heller and McDonald decisions. The Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, held for the first time in U.S. history that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to firearm ownership for self defense in the home; striking down D.C.’s handgun ban. In McDonald v. Chicago, the Court held that the Second Amendment, as interpreted in Heller, applied to the states through the Due Process Clause.

In the September 2012 issue of America’s 1st Freedom, Keene wrote, “Governor Mitt Romney is the Republican Party’s presidential nominee and the one man capable of denying President Barack Obama another four years in the White House … Gun owners in Massachusetts fared well under Romney … During his speech at NRA’s 2012 Annual Meetings, Romney, an NRA Life Member, championed the U.S. Constitution. Romney commended the NRA for calling for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder, who continued to be defiant before Congress’ demand for answers in the so-called ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal … The choice is clear: if President Obama wins a second term in November, he will go after America’s gun owners, our freedoms and the values we cherish.” Keene was referring to the discontinued “Fast and Furious” gun trafficking investigation on the southwest border and Attorney General Eric Holder’s failure to comply with a congressional subpoena for documents related to the operation. A report released by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General on September 19, 2023 found that there is no evidence that Attorney General Eric Holder was aware of the tactics used in the investigation until after it was concluded in 2011.

In an August 27, 2023 interview with NRA News, Keene stated, “Don’t hesitate for a moment to realize that if [President Barack Obama] gets a second term, if he appoints people to the [U.S.] Supreme Court and to the lower courts, and if he has a chance by regulation and executive order or an opportunity to go back to the U.N. to get the gun treaty…he’ll do all these things and we’ll suffer." When asked what he thought of Vice President Joe Biden’s plan to attend the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, Keene replied, “Maybe nobody else will have him … This guy is a joke … I think [the convention] is very important because of what’s at stake. The fact is, that this is probably the most important election of our lifetime. It’s certainly true for believers in the Second Amendment and that makes this convention incredibly important because of the stakes.” Keene was referring to a U.N. Small Arms Treaty which would set only international standards for the import/export of conventional weapons—leaving it to individual countries to “regulate internal transfers of arms and national ownership, including through national constitutional protections on private ownership.”

On June 8, 2012, Keene spoke at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event in Chicago on a panel entitled “President Obama’s Fast and Furious Disregard for the Rule of Law.” Keene stated, “The Obama administration has played loose with the rule of law since this president’s first day in office. Sadly, he and his principal advisors seem to me to come from a generation that sincerely believes that the ends in almost all circumstances justify the means. Thus they enforce laws that further their goals, they ignore those that do not. They interpret the laws and the Constitution itself in light of what they want them to say rather than either the intent of Congress or the words of the Founders. And when anyone, including the Supreme Court itself, disagrees, they go on the attack.” He added, “It goes far beyond gun questions. Consider their current assault on the various states’ attempts to protect the integrity of the democratic process itself. I think we’ll have some discussion of what’s going on in Florida right now where the Justice Department, without any basis that most experts can see, are trying to stop the state of Florida from purging non-citizens and the dead and others from their voting rolls prior to the next election on the ground that it’s unfair, I guess, to the dead and the non-eligible voters.” One week prior to Keene’s remarks, 67 Florida election supervisors stated they were going to stop removing names from county rolls because the state's data is flawed—and because the U.S. Department of Justice says the process violates federal voting laws.

Keene also criticized the administration's support for the "DISCLOSE Act," observing, "Consider the president's personal disdain for the democratic process. While spending more than any of his predecessors on fundraising and bragging that he's going to have a billion dollars in the upcoming campaign to bury his opponents, he publicly attacks his opponents because they spend money to get their message out to the public." The DISCLOSE Act would ban U.S. corporations controlled by foreign governments from influencing election outcomes through the use of campaign contributions; prevent Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) recipients from making political contributions; give shareholders, organization members, and the general public access to information regarding corporate and interest group campaign expenditures; and create transparency mechanisms for organizations with more than 500,000 members to publicly identify themselves in their political ads. The NRA has publicly opposed the “DISCLOSE Act.”

At a second panel, entitled “Defending Self-Defense: The Liberal’s Shadow War on the Second Amendment.” Keene stated, “In 1968, the Johnson administration forced through what was known as the ‘Gun Control Act of 1968,’ a bill that Senator Edward Kennedy said was a good first step toward eliminating firearms in the United States. Richard Nixon’s attorney general, two years later, proposed a plan that would have eliminated the private ownership of handguns by 1983.” The Gun Control Act of 1968 was, in fact, the product of a compromise between the bill’s sponsors—including Senator Thomas Dodd—and the NRA, who supported the final version of the legislation. The Gun Control Act created a list of individuals prohibited from purchasing weapons; including, felons, drug abusers, and individuals adjudicated mentally defective. The law did not ban any firearms. In addition, Elliot Richardson, Nixon’s attorney general, never publicly proposed a plan to eliminate private handgun ownership. Keene added, “When it was decided that this new challenge faced us, the old board decided they wanted to move the organization to the Midwest and make it into a conservation group because they thought that politics was tacky… By 2000, the NRA’s influence was such that Bill Clinton would say that gun owners cost Al Gore the electoral vote of five states and the presidency of the United States and in a overt sense, at least, most Liberal politicians decided it was time to take guns off the table and do what Barack Obama is trying to do, which is to say, as he promised Sarah Brady, to proceed to deliver on his anti-gun promises, but to do so under the radar if possible because the electorate is not exactly friendly.”

Keene also spoke about the 2012 Wisconsin recall election of Governor Scott Walker, stating, “The NRA spent a lot of effort in Wisconsin targeting of different groups, but particularly targeting union members who are gun owners and hunters and in the recall election earlier this week I believe that Scott Walker in facing a recall generated by union bosses received more labor votes than he had when he ran for election in the first instance.”

Finally, Keene told the following story, “I was elected to the presidency of the National Rifle Association at our annual meeting in Pittsburgh a couple of years ago, and there was in attendance a member of the Supreme Court in the state of Pennsylvania who asked if I could stop in Harrisburg on my way home because he wanted to show me the Supreme Court chambers… He said the court would be in session, but I should stop and they would take me to the justices’ lounge and then they’d call a recess so they could take me on this tour. And I went there and they did indeed did call a recess and the justices came out and then the justice who’d invited me said, ‘Gentlemen, disrobe.’ And they opened their robes and five of them were carrying firearms, which is different from Illinois. And I said I understand that contempt of this court is a very serious offense.”

In a May 15, 2023 editorial for the Washington Times, Keene accused President Barack Obama of having a plan to “crucify” political opponents. He made specific reference to an Obama campaign blog that sought to foster transparency about donors to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s political action committee (PAC). “By calling out, investigating and doing their level best to demonize major Romney contributors, [President Obama and his “managers”] clearly are hoping to make others pause before opening their checkbooks to the former Massachusetts governor,” Keene wrote. “These threats are aimed… at the hundreds and perhaps thousands of potential Romney contributors who will slink away lest they, too, become targets of the Obama attack machine.” The previous evening, Idaho businessman and Romney finance co-chair Frank Vandersloot, who was listed on the blog, had made an additional donation of $100,000 to Romney’s PAC on the “Bill O’Reilly Show.” “I think the only response is to make another donation,” Vandersloot noted.

In the January 2012 issue of America’s 1st Freedom, Keene accused President Barack Obama of “working overtime to gut the Second Amendment,” stating, “This is a president who has signaled to the international anti-gun community that the United Nations should go ahead with its plan to develop a treaty that could severely restrict or eliminate our Second Amendment rights.” He warned, “We are facing the most crucial election of our lifetimes in terms of the Second Amendment … The bottom line is that our rights are truly in danger. We cannot rely exclusively on the courts or even Congress to protect them. We are the final line of defense of the Second Amendment. We all have to be prepared to fight as never before.”

Keene presented Roy Innis, the controversial director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), with the John M. Ashbrook Award at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference and said, “There is no living American I admire more than Roy Innis.” The award is named after one of the founders of the ACU who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 21 years as a Republican from Ohio. In his remarks, Innis warned of “a growing tyranny in our country” and said the candidates for the 2008 presidential election were “some of the most dangerous people to ever run for the presidency of the United States.” Speaking on the influence of CPAC, Innis said, “We have developed some skills. We are able to influence the Republican Party, and nudge it, and push it in certain directions. Let us teach those skills to our young brothers in the Tea Party.”

On October 21, 2010, King posted a photo on his Facebook Wall reminding viewers to “Take out the trash” on Election Day 2010. Below the image he commented, “Just a friendly reminder.”

On January 22, 2013, in a speech at the Weatherby Foundation International Hunting and Conservation Awards in Reno, Nevada, LaPierre stated, “[President Barack] Obama wants to turn the idea of absolutism into a dirty word. Just another word for extremism. He wants you, all of you, and Americans throughout all of this country, to accept the idea of principles as he sees fit. It’s a way of redefining words so that common sense is turned upside down and that nobody knows the difference.” LaPierre was referring to President Obama’s second inaugural address, in which he stated, “We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.” LaPierre also addressed President Obama’s January 2013 proposals to reduce gun violence, stating, “He wants to put every private, personal firearms transaction right under the thumb of the federal government. He wants to keep all of those names in a massive federal registry. There’s only two reasons for a federal list on gun owners: to either tax ‘em or take ‘em. That’s the only reasons. And anyone who says that’s excessive, President Obama says that’s an absolutist.” In fact, the Obama administration had never proposed the creation of a universal list of gun owners. “Absolutes do exist,” added LaPierre. “Words do have specific meaning in language and in law. It’s the basis of all civilization. Without those absolutes, without those protections, democracy decays into nothing more than two wolves and one lamb voting on, well, who to eat for lunch.”

On October 5, 2012, LaPierre announced the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund’s endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Fishersville, Virginia. LaPierre stated, “The dream is to save America and our freedom … You’re sure not free if you can’t defend yourself and everyone knows that. And I also know something else about ya. You’re not gonna surrender submit, succumb, or be marginalized. You’re ready to make a difference for freedom in this country. And we have to do that, because we’re standin’ on the edge of a [President Barack] Obama cliff with our freedom. If President Obama gets reelected, he’s gonna have one to three Supreme Court appointments and I guarantee you this, if that happens, one to three more [Justice Sonia] Sotomayors and [Justice Elena] Kagans and we can kiss our constitutional right to own a firearm in the United States goodbye, along with a lot of the rest of our freedoms. And we can’t let that happen … Does anybody trust an Obama Administration in the second term to be anywhere near negotiating with a club of governments called the United Nations on our freedom? Their gun plan is: Turn over your firearms and your protection to the government. The government will protect ya… That U.N. plan is about global agencies monitoring, surveillance, supervision, lists, all institutionalized within the bureaucracy of the United Nations … I guarantee this, if your glass breaks at 2:00 a.m. at night somewhere from some criminal, you all know that those baby blue helmets of the U.N. aren’t gonna be there to protect ya and neither is President Obama or [U.S. Attorney General] Eric Holder. What will protect ya is our freedom that we have here in the United States under the Second Amendment to the Constitution. And there’s not a government or authority on the planet that can match that if you’re ever in that situation.” LaPierre was referring to a U.N. Small Arms Treaty that would set only international standards for the import/export of conventional weapons—leaving it to individual countries to “regulate internal transfers of arms and national ownership, including through national constitutional protections on private ownership.” Finally, LaPierre added, “We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg on what’s in store if President Obama is reelected … It’s the most dangerous election of our lifetime … All of our freedoms, all of our rights, all of our way of life, all of the Second Amendment is on the line.”

In the August 2012 issue of America’s 1st Freedom, LaPierre wrote, “For months I’ve warned you of the grave consequences our freedoms will face if [President Barack] Obama, his administration and its Capitol Hill enablers are reelected on Nov. 6 [2012] … Now Obama’s allies on Capitol Hill want to deny the right to political free speech to you, me and groups like the NRA completely and forever–even if they have to amend the U.S. Constitution.” LaPierre was referring to the “People’s Rights Amendment” introduced by Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) in response to the controversial Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In Citizens United, the Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions. Rep. McGovern’s amendment to the U.S. Constitution would clarify the meaning of ‘people,’ ‘person’ or ‘citizen,’ defining them not as “corporations, limited liability companies, or other corporate entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state,” but as individual human beings. The amendment would also subject corporate entities to “such regulation as the people, through their elected State and Federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.”

In the July 2012 issue of America’s 1st Freedom, LaPierre wrote, “We have been enormously successful in restoring Second Amendment freedom to honest Americans. But those hard-earned victories are vulnerable so long as Barack Obama is president. Despite his claims to the contrary, the threats we face today are as real and dangerous as any we’ve face before … Americans have had enough of this administration’s elitist contempt for our freedoms and our way of life … We can’t wait. If we sit back and count on a victory in 2016, we will face four long years under an emboldened anti-gun president. With no more elections to worry about, Obama will finally be free to launch an open assault on the Second Amendment. Now is the time to stop that from happening. It’s up to each of us to ask ourselves one simple question every day from now until November: am I doing everything I can to win this election?”

In a June 28, 2023 interview with NRA News, LaPierre spoke about the “Fast and Furious” gun trafficking investigation on the southwest border and a vote in the House of Representatives to hold U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal contempt for failure to comply with a congressional subpoena for documents related to the operation. NRA News co-host Ginny Simone asked LaPierre to respond to D.C. Delegate to the House of Representatives Eleanor Holmes Norton’s assertion that the vote was partisan and motivated by NRA lobbying of legislators. LaPierre replied, “Well, that’s all a bunch of garbage to tell you the truth … I mean, all the enablers in the media that are trying to justify what went on here and refuse to ask any of the Watergate questions: who knew, when they knew, how high it goes … Watergate was a third-rate burglary. No one was killed.” A report released by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General on September 19, 2023 found that there is no evidence that Attorney General Eric Holder was aware of the tactics used in the investigation until after it was concluded in 2011.

In the June 2012 issue of America’s 1st Freedom, LaPierre warned, “American freedom as we know it is in jeopardy.” He wrote, “There is no greater freedom than the ability to own a firearm to protect yourself, your family, your community and your country. That freedom is the heart and soul of our nation. And that soul is at stake in this election … If [President Barack] Obama wins this year, he will wage an all-out assault on America’s heart and soul. This isn’t just the most important election of our lifetimes–it’s the most important election for our children’s, grandchildren’s and great-grandchildren’s lifetimes.”

In his opening remarks at the 2012 NRA Convention in St. Louis on April 13, 2012, LaPierre warned, “If President Obama gets a second term, America as we know it will be on its way to being lost forever.”

In the March 2012 issue of America’s 1st Freedom, LaPierre warned that if the NRA fails to end the “Barack Obama regime…the Right to Keep and Bear Arms could well perish in a Supreme Court heartbeat.” He added that an “Obama majority” on the Supreme Court would “rule that only the government has a right to guns, not individuals like you.” “We have time to stop the Obama juggernaut and to make history together,” LaPierre stated, “but we must start now—not only to save our guns but to save our heritage. The future of freedom in America depends on it.”

On February 10, 2012, during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), LaPierre warned listeners that “This is the most dangerous election in our lifetime … Our soul is at stake in this election. The campaign is a fight for our country, our values and the freedom we believe in.” LaPierre then detailed a “massive” conspiracy by the administration of President Barack Obama to “deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment.” LaPierre then boasted, “We’ll spend and do whatever it takes to tell the truth the media ignores.”

Under LaPierre’s leadership, the National Rifle Association has frequently promoted gun confiscation conspiracy theories surrounding the administration of President Barack Obama and/or a treaty being considered by the United Nations to curb illegal, international sales of small arms. In a November 3, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, LaPierre wrote, “The Obama administration … hatched a political conspiracy to deceive Americans and hide its true agenda to dismantle the Second Amendment and our freedom. By delaying its anti-gun legislative agenda, it’s tried to dupe gun owners into believing our fundamental freedom is safe. The political calculation of the White House is clear: Deceive the voters and get re-elected at all costs and then, with no more elections to worry about, get busy dismantling the Second Amendment and destroying American freedom forever … Mr. Obama…is responsible for his administration’s efforts to support a United Nations treaty that could severely restrict or effectively ban civilian ownership of firearms worldwide.” In fact, since assuming office, President Obama has not advocated for any gun control measures, instead signing legislation to allow firearms in national parks and on Amtrak trains. Furthermore, the UN has no power to alter American gun laws. Any UN treaty that called for changes in U.S. gun laws would have to be ratified by a 2/3 vote of the U.S. Senate.

In 2006, Mitchell appeared on MSNBC to defend a number of Republicans embroiled in ethical scandals. Of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Mitchell said, “Those allegations, the indictment against Tom DeLay, were completely politically motivated.” She then bet public relations strategist Cliff Schecter dinner that DeLay would not go to jail. In January 2011, DeLay was sentenced to three years in prison for money laundering.

In an August 30, 2023 interview with Bloomberg News, Norquist referred to President Barack Obama stated, “From a guy who was going to be the bipartisan non-name-caller, he does an awful lot of name-calling, an awful lot of blame-shifting. And he plays nasty politics for a guy who was going to bring us all together and not be red or blue, when all he does is whine about Bush. I don’t remember Bush whining about Clinton.”

In a July 2012 interview with Parade, former President George H. W. Bush made reference to Norquist’s “tax payer protection pledge,” which calls for elected officials to "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business; and to oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing the tax rate.” Bush stated, “The rigidity of those pledges is something I don’t like. The circumstances change and you can’t be wedded to some formula by Grover Norquist. Who the hell is Grover Norquist, anyway?" In response, Norquist directed the media to a Facebook post on the page of his group, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR). The post shows Bush alongside a quote he made in 1992 about why he changed his mind about raising taxes while president. Below the post, ATR wrote, “With Taxmageddon set to happen at the end of this year, Congressional Democrats are once again pushing a ‘grand bargain’ that would have Republicans agree to raise taxes on American families and employers in exchange for imaginary spending cuts. Any lawmaker willing to consider such a deal is poised to become another fool of history.”

In a June 13, 2023 interview on C-SPAN, Norquist responded to former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s comment at a June 1, 2023 House Budget Committee hearing that that he hadn't signed Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” because he wasn't one to “outsource your principles and convictions to people.” Norquist’s pledge calls for elected officials to "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business; and to oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing the tax rate.” Norquist responded to Bush’s comments by saying, “When Jeb Bush comes in from out of town like some yokel off the bus and gets hurled into the middle of this and starts quoting Democratic senators who are lying, it puts him in an awkward position.” Norquist also addressed Bush’s June 11, 2023 comment that former President Ronald Reagan and his father, former President George H. W. Bush, would have a “http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/norquist-describes-jeb-bush-as-a-yokel-off-the-bus--20120613hard time” finding a place in the current Republican Party. Norquist stated, “That's the meme, the story line, the narrative that Obama is trying to drive … Today, the modern Republican Party is the party that Reagan created.”

In a May 8, 2023 speech before the Economic Club of Annapolis, Norquist called President Barack Obama a “European-style socialist” and a Democratic-controlled government the “road to serfdom.”

During a February 2012 speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Norquist told the crowd, “Three years ago, a new crew came into Washington: [President Barack] Obama, [Senator Majority Leader Harry] Reid, [Former House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi. And they had a different vision. Their vision of the road to serfdom … Their plan was to turn us irrevocably into something between France and Greece and, on a bad day, Chicago … The left is not made up of friends and allies. It is made up by competing parasites.” He also stated, “All we have to do is replace Obama. ... We are not auditioning for ‘fearless leader.’ We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the [U.S. Representative Paul] Ryan budget. ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate. Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: The House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared." Ryan’s budget plan, “The Path to Prosperity,” would add $3.127 trillion to the deficit during the decade spanning 2013 to 2022, according to a table on page 88 of the plan. In its March 2012 projections, the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency, estimated that if “current laws generally remain unchanged,” the federal government would incur deficits totaling $2.887 trillion from 2013 to 2022 under Ryan’s budget plan.

In a January 26, 2023 interview with National Journal, Norquist was asked about the prospect of President Barack Obama winning a second term. Referring to tax cuts passed under the presidential administration of George W. Bush, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy, Norquist said, “Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach.”

In November 2011, Norquist told Rolling Stone “It’s a different Republican Party now. The modern Republican Party” would no sooner recognize a politician who advocated for tax increases than the “Democratic Party would recognize [segregation proponent] George Wallace.”

In 2011, Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform organization lobbied on a number of issues before Congress. Among the many conservative bills supported by Norquist’s organization were:

• H.R. 1076, a bill that sought to defund National Public Radio (NPR).
• H.R. 1217, a bill that sought to repeal the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.” ATR called H.R. 1217 “a taxpayer-funded exercise in social engineering.”
• S. 482, a bill that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from promulgating “any regulation concerning, take action relating to, or take into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas to address climate change.”
• H.R. 3, an anti-abortion bill described by NARAL as legislation “so extreme that it manipulates the tax code to advance anti-choice policies and could spur the IRS to audit rape and incest survivors who choose abortion care.” According to Mother Jones, “To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest.”
• H.R. 462, a bill calling for the elimination of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

In 2006, the Associated Press reported that Norquist—who visited the White House 97 times between 2001 and 2006—helped arrange meetings for clients of corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff with officials in the administration of George W. Bush. At the same time, Norquist was soliciting donations from these clients for his group Americans for Tax Reform. When the Bush administration tried to seal records of visitors to the White House, Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney said, “By trying to extend a special privilege typically reserved for U.S. government employees to protect their Abramoff cronies like Grover Norquist…the Bush administration showed just how willing they are to manipulate the law to hide the truth and protect their political interests.”

In a February 2001 article for The American Spectator, Norquist wrote, “[President George W.] Bush now has the incentive to level the playing field by stripping the Democrats of their ill-gotten gains. To do that he'll have to shake the Democrats' five pillars.” Norquist identified these five pillars as; “labor unions,” “taxpayer funded lobbies,” “greedy trial lawyers,” Big City political machines,” and “voter fraud.” Labor unions, Norquist explained, use money from government contracts and give “political kickbacks to Democrats.” He also complained that “funding earmarked to promote hunting and outdoor sports has been redirected to animal rights groups.” Trial lawyers need to be targeted, Norquist explained, because “in some states trial lawyers give more to Democrats than union leaders do.” Norquist proposed tort reform, which would deprive trial lawyers of “billions of dollars from American consumers,” as a solution. Norquist asserted that mayors and precinct workers who handle federal funds to help the poor comprise a Democratic machine to “deliver the votes in Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and St. Louis.” Finally, Norquist stated, “The whole 36-day circus in Florida was designed to give the local politicians in Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties a chance to manufacture or find enough Gore votes, or lose or damage enough Bush votes, to overcome Bush's margin. Although the effort failed, it is estimated that 5,000 felons, mostly Democrats, voted illegally in Florida, and we may never know how many illegal aliens voted.” He is referring to the voter recount in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. The results of that recount were controversial and several irregularities are thought to have favored George W. Bush, including, the "butterfly ballot," which produced an unexpectedly large number of votes for third-party candidate Patrick Buchanan, and a purge of over 54,000 citizens from the Florida voting rolls, of whom 54% were African-Americans.

In 1995, in the wake of the Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives, Norquist, then- House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (who has since been convicted of money laundering), and Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff founded The K Street Project. The goal of the project was to facilitate the hiring of Republicans at top lobbying firms and then reward the firms by offering access to influential GOP officials. The explicit “pay-to-play” nature of the project is now illegal, however, in 2003 Republican lobbyists held 33 of the 36 top-level lobbying positions in Washington. During the midst of the project, Norquist told journalist Elizabeth Drew, “There should be as many Democrats working on K Street representing corporate America as there are Republicans working in organized labor—and that number is close to zero.” Norquist credited Abramoff—who was later convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy charges in a far-reaching political scandal—with “instigating the whole [K Street] project.”

In a December 2, 2023 op-ed for World Net Daily, Norris wrote, “Now that [President Barack] Obama has been re-elected and Democrats control the Senate, Republicans no longer have the chance to repeal Obamacare. But all is not lost. There’s still an opportunity for America to stop this disaster by choking the life out of the federal monstrosity.” Norris cited several challenges to the Affordable Care Act in lower federal courts. The Affordable Care Act allows states to develop online health insurance exchanges (an organized marketplace for the purchase of health insurance) or to rely on a federally facilitated exchange. Norris wrote, “In 2010, John Graham, director of health care studies at the [conservative] Pacific Research Institute, urged states to boycott the exchanges … If we can’t repeal Obamacare in its entirety, let’s support each of these efforts to peel away every one of its unconstitutional layers to preserve our liberty, the quality of American health care and the fiscal stability of our nation.”

In an October 31, 2023 op-ed for Newsbusters, Norris wrote, “[President Barack] Obama can spin a fact, and even though it's wrong or untrue, we almost believe it. Then he sends his minions out to spin the same fact, hoping that if we hear it enough times, we finally will believe it. The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is a prime example. Even though Obama knew—from the moment of the assault—that it was a terrorist attack, he didn't let the American people know. We recently learned a drone was recording the attack in real time, and our president was watching from the Situation Room. It is clear that he chose to deceive the American people deliberately, saying it was a mob protest and blaming it on a video that nobody had seen.” Norris was referring to an attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya on September 11, 2012, in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. On September 12, 2012, one day after the attack, President Obama spoke about the incident, saying, “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for." Furthermore, in an October 24, 2023 article, CBS reported that an audio feed of the attack—not a video—was being monitored live by Charlene Lamb , the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security at the State Department, not President Obama.

In a September 25, 2023 op-ed for Townhall, Norris wrote, “Sometimes, as the saying goes, the truth really is stranger than fiction. There may have been some wild plotlines on ‘Walker, Texas Ranger,’ but there was nothing that compares to the scandal surrounding ‘Fast and Furious’—the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation that resulted in the loss of a distinguished Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry. The congressional investigation into "Fast and Furious" has been going on for more than a year, but it was stonewalled by Attorney General Eric Holder, who instead opened an internal investigation by the Department of Justice's inspector general … ‘Fast and Furious’ involved the ‘walking’ of guns into Mexico—an artful term for gun smuggling that was clearly illegal but nonetheless encouraged … There may be deeper motives for allowing these guns to walk into Mexico that remain unaccounted for. Is it possible that allowing an infusion of firearms to go into Mexico was intended to provoke an explosion of gun violence, thus prompting domestic politicians to call for sweeping new restrictions on our rights? The report is silent on this count … The inspector general's report is a chilling indictment of a collapse in leadership at the highest levels of federal law enforcement. There may be 14 staffers who take the fall, but it's clear that their politically appointed superiors were either asleep at the switch or willing to jeopardize public safety to push an agenda that remains undisclosed. Can anyone possibly need any more reasons to register to vote? The bottom line is that the American people deserve answers that go well beyond the inspector general's report. Congress needs to proceed with a comprehensive investigation, and it must have the unfettered cooperation and access that the Department of Justice thus far has withheld. And Justice is clearly in need of new leadership. Let's give it to them.” The DOJ Inspector General’s report released on September 19, 2012, which Norris refers to—though critical of officials in Washington, D.C. [the report recommended potential sanctions for 14 government employees]—stated that Attorney General Eric Holder had no advance knowledge of the tactics and risks involved in the “Fast and Furious” operation until after it was concluded in 2011.

In a September 9, 2023 op-ed for World Net Daily, Norris wrote, “Fewer than 60 days remain before Election Day. I don’t need to tell you how important this election is to the future of our country. The stakes are high, and that’s why I proudly serve as honorary chairman of Trigger the Vote, the NRA’s nonpartisan campaign to register voters who support the Second Amendment. As a proud gun owner and defender of our Constitution, I am working within the system to make sure my voice is heard in Washington … There’s a storm brewing on the horizon. Those who want to restrict our freedom have not surrendered. In truth, they are counting on this election to make their move. They are playing the long game, looking down the road to a day when one or more vacancies on the Supreme Court could upset the current balance. The Heller and McDonald decisions were decided by razor-thin, 5-4 majorities in the Supreme Court. Those who want to overturn these decisions are betting on at least one of the five Supreme Court justices to retire or otherwise leave service during the next four years. Some pundits have suggested that the number of Supreme Court vacancies filled by the next president could be as many as three … Our freedoms hang in the balance by the thin gossamer thread of a single vote. If that vote turns, the victories we worked so hard to solidify could be reversed … We need to make sure we have a president whose nominees for any court – including the Supreme Court–will support the original meaning of our Constitution.” The Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, held for the first time in U.S. history that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to firearm ownership for self defense in the home; striking down D.C.’s handgun ban. In McDonald v. Chicago, the Court held that the Second Amendment, as interpreted in Heller, applied to the states through the Due Process Clause.

In an August 19, 2023 op-ed for World Net Daily, Norris wrote, “Though America’s founders and framers of our Constitution built a framework that encouraged the freedom of religion, they trusted in God, the Creator, or Providence, to help, protect and provide for our new nation and the lives of its citizens. From our founding documents to their congressional deliberations and legislation, they advocated the role of religion and God in all they did, including intermingling their own Christian faith in their political convictions and choices. Our founders believed our republic was intended only for a moral and religious people, and that leaders of this nation should stand and fight for the same … When New York churches can no longer meet in public school settings, a federal court orders a Rhode Island public school to remove a prayer banner that has been posted for over five decades (and it complies), the federal government mandates Catholic institutions to cover abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization (at no cost to the patient), the U.S. Air Force removes ‘God’ from the motto of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, the National Park Service omits the words ‘Laus Deo’ (Latin, 'Praise be to God') from a Washington Monument capstone replica, atheists continue to contest 'under God' in our Pledge of Allegiance, town councils can’t pray to start their meetings, evangelical pillars like Franklin Graham are subdued by gotcha-gangs in the mainstream media and cultural icons like football superstar Tim Tebow can’t even bow in silent prayer without criticism, etc., you can be assured that religious liberty (and Christianity, in particular) is under assault by secular progressives across America. And leading the national charge is none other than our own president, Barack Obama.” The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibited the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”

In a May 27, 2023 op-ed for World Net Daily, Norris wrote about President Barack Obama’s “delusions” of a “stronger, safer, and more respected” United States. Norris claimed, “We have such a weak, unsecured, and disrespected U.S…because President Obama has paraded U.S. weaknesses and mistakes to the world since his 2009 ‘apology tour.’” “Mr. President, you don’t build national or leadership strength, safety and respect by groveling and groping,” Norris wrote.

Contradicting National Rifle Association claims about the source of illegal guns pouring into Mexico, Norris wrote in an March 22, 2023 op-ed for WorldNetDaily: “More than 7,000 lives have been lost in Mexico’s drug war in just the last 14 months, in which nine out of 10 guns recovered from crime scenes came from the U.S.” Turning to the topic of illegal immigration, Norris stated, “Isn’t it time we quit restricting our border agents by granting illegals more rights than our citizens? … And the question that keeps coming back to my mind is: How is it that we can militarily overthrow a tyrant like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, yet we can’t keep illegals from crossing our borders? As Mike Huckabee says, ‘If the government can’t track illegals, then let’s outsource the job to UPS or Fed Ex.’ It’s true. If they can track a lost package anywhere in the world within minutes, they can certainly track down and keep track of illegals.”

In a September 28, 2023 op-ed for WorldNetDaily, Norris wrote. “If there is any minority in the coastal states that is being discriminated against and actively suppressed, it is conservatives, and worst of all are religious conservatives – and everyone knows it … In a so-called age of tolerance, it amazes me just how intolerant some are of those who stand for traditional values. For example, if I stand against California’s memorializing of the Harvey Milk Day or stand for their constitutional amendment of Proposition 8 to safeguard heterosexual purity in marriage, ... I’m considered by many as intolerant and a bigot.” Harvey Milk Day celebrates the memory of gay activist and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk who was assassinated in 1978 by a political rival. Norris also named actor Mel Gibson as someone who has “stood for conservative values.” Gibson has been a controversial figure since a recording of an anti-Semitic rant during his 2006 DUI arrest appeared in the media.

In an August 31, 2023 op-ed for WorldNetDaily, Norris repeated a number of falsehoods about President Barack Obama, writing, “As with so many of you, I realized months ago Obama could unfortunately get away with just about anything because too many Americans seem to care only about charisma and the term ‘change.’ It doesn’t matter if Obama plagiarizes speeches, who his pastor and spiritual mentor is for 20 years, that he’s got the most liberal voting record in the Senate, that he refused to wear the American flag as a pin, that he didn’t place his hand over his heart during the national anthem, that his wife has just recently become proud of her country or that he is sympathetic to Muslim terrorist groups.”

In a July 12, 2023 op-ed for WorldNetDaily, Norris complained that representative democracy is “discriminatory,” writing, “I don’t only think there are too many cooks in Congress’ kitchen nowadays, but the numbers are stacked in discriminatory ways. For example, if California represents a larger liberal voice with its 53 representatives, what chance or how fair is it for smaller more conservative states who have between one and five representatives and votes in the House? The U.S. doesn’t need a new reapportionment act to raise the number of representatives, but a return to the Constitution to reduce the number of representatives in pursuit of creating more equitable regions or districts. Personally, I believe, just as we have one governor per state, we should consider reducing Congress to one representative and two senators per state (the minimal by constitutional requirements).” Norris’s theory about the Constitution is flawed. The Fourteenth Amendment mandates that U.S. Representatives be apportioned according to state population.

In a 2008 interview with televangelist Pat Robertson, Norris said, “I would go to Washington, and I would line up every member of Washington. Then I’d have [Republican Congressman] Ron Paul, who I believe is one of the more honest politicians back there. I’d say, ‘Ron, point out the honest politicians and the dishonest ones.’ And we’d go down the line. He’d say, ‘He’s honest, he’s honest, he’s corrupted.’ I’d walk up to him and I’d say, ‘You’re fired.’ If he didn’t move immediately, I would choke him unconscious and roll him over to the side there.”

In an October 21, 2023 op-ed for WorldNetDaily, Norris endorsed Republican Mike Huckabee for president, writing, “Though [Rudy] Giuliani might be savvy enough to lead people, Fred Thompson wise enough to wade through the tides of politics, [John] McCain tough enough to fight terrorism and [Mitt] Romney business-minded enough to grow our economy, I believe the only one who has all of the characteristics to lead America forward into the future is ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee … Like our Founding Fathers, he’s not afraid to stand up for a Creator and against secularist beliefs.”

In a November 6, 2023 op-ed for WorldNetDaily, Norris wrote, “With the culture wars at full tilt, it is somewhat surprising that expected voter turn out is forecasted as low as 35 percent. This is particularly troubling since Democrats only need to pick up six seats to gain a majority in the 100-seat Senate [during the 2006 congressional elections]. They need only 15 seats out of the 435-seat House to achieve their first majority since being swept out of power in 1994. To not vote is simply a vote for the opposition.” He also added, “I figure if the media can rally behind an actor when he takes a stand for stem-cell research, they can equally back me when I support the [Iraq] war and our troops, increasing border control or voting for Governor Rick Perry in my home state of Texas.”

On the December 18, 2023 broadcast of the Glenn Beck Radio Program, North spoke to Joe Pags about President Barack Obama’s administration, stating “We’re in deep trouble in America … The background of all of this is a condition of governance today which is bereft of moral leadership. It is absent of any vision for America other than leading from behind and acquiescing to a global perspective that somehow the United Nations is gonna solve our problems if we simply surrender our sovereignty, our independence and our ability to defend ourselves.” North was referring to a U.N. Small Arms Treaty that would set only international standards for the import/export of conventional weapons—leaving it to individual countries to “regulate internal transfers of arms and national ownership, including through national constitutional protections on private ownership.” Pags asked North, “How is it that we’ve gotten to that point in this country that the government thinks we work for them and not the other way around?” North replied, “This, I think, relates a lot to what just transpired up in Connecticut and what we’ve now seen with these killings. Over the course of the last fifty years, basically two and a half generations, this country has walked away from its founding principles. We’ve said, we’re not gonna allow prayer in schools. Role models that I grew up with, to give you an example my dad was a soldier. Two wars, Korea and World War II. Every one of my male teachers was either a veteran of World War II, or Korea, or both. These were people I looked up to … Where are those guys and people today? Are parents taking the kids to Sunday school or church? Are they taking them and showing them the positive, adult, male role models in life?” North was referring to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in which 20 first-grade students and six adults were shot and killed. Pags asked North, “I think we’ve got too many single parent households. I don’t know how we got here. Is government to blame for that at all, or have we as a society rolled over and said, ‘Forget it. We don’t have to worry about the old value system’? North replied, “Well, I think to an extent both are true. First of all, the idea of no-fault divorce became very, very attractive back in the 60s. The idea that we’re not gonna allow prayer or God to be mentioned in schools. We’ve all talked about the War on Christmas the last couple of years but, it’s not just Christmas. It’s the entire Judeo-Christian framework of our country.”

In a September 27, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, North wrote to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney some of the things U.S. Armed Services members would like to hear from him at the first presidential debate, stating, “I proffer a few lines you may want to use in the upcoming debates. Full disclosure here: These aren't my ideas. This is what the brightest and bravest of this generation now in uniform hope to hear from our next president:”

• “If you make me your commander in chief, I will bow to God Almighty—but never to a foreign potentate.” North was likely referring to President Barack Obama bowing to several foreign dignitaries during the course of his presidency, including the Saudi King, the Emperor of Japan, and the Queen of England.
• “I never will apologize for the blood and treasure our country has sacrificed in offering others the hope of freedom.” North was likely referring to speeches President Barack Obama gave in 2009. For example, in a speech in Strasbourg, France, April 3, 2009, President Obama stated, “America has shown arrogance.” In President Obama’s address to the Summit of the Americas opening ceremony in the Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago on April 17, 2009, he stated, “While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms. But I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership.”
• “I never will call an act of terrorism ‘workplace violence.’” North was referring to a mass shooting at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009. In that shooting, Nidal Hassan, an Army psychiatrist killed 12 people and wounded 30 others. The Defense Department classified the shooting as “workplace violence.”
• “I never will announce an arbitrary deadline for withdrawing from battle and give advantage to our adversaries.” North was referring to President Barack Obama’s June 22, 2011, announcement that he would withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by 2014 as Afghan security forces replace them.
• “I won't beg the Russians –or anyone else—for more ‘space,’ saying I can be more ‘flexible’ after an election.” North was referring to a discussion President Obama had with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in which he told Medvedev he would have “more flexibility” to deal with contentious foreign policy issues, such as missile defense, following the November 2012 elections.
• “Though I am committed to reducing the size and cost of the federal government, I will insist that Congress provide funds necessary to deter aggression, keep America's military No. 1 in the world and keep faith with all who have served and who now look—often in vain—for a good job.” North was likely referring to President Obama’s plan to cut $487 billion in planned military spending by 2022. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called the cuts acceptable and because of budget restraints, inevitable.

In a July 28, 2023 op-ed for Townhall, North wrote, “When Alexander the Great died at the age of 32 in 323 B.C., his once unbeatable army began a 2,900-mile withdrawal from India and headed home to Macedonia. As they retreated, the empire they had created collapsed behind them. To prevent pursuit, Alexander's royal cavalry and infantry dealt viciously with all internal dissent, destroyed cities and burned bridges. The Russians employed a similar scorched-earth tactic against Napoleon in 1812, as did the Red Army when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. It's a maneuver now being employed both domestically and internationally by [President] Barack Obama.” North also addressed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ “Fast and Furious” gun trafficking investigation on the southwest border, stating, “[In Mexico] nearly 50,000 people have been killed in drug-fueled violence since 2006. With narco-terrorism now spreading to neighboring Guatemala and Honduras, the [Obama administration] decided to allow thousands of firearms to flow across the U.S. border to drug cartels in the ill-conceived "Fast and Furious" operation. The result: more dead Mexicans, at least one dead American Border Patrol agent and Attorney General Eric Holder held in contempt of Congress [for failure to comply with a congressional subpoena].” A report released by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General on September 19, 2023 found that there is no evidence that Attorney General Eric Holder was aware of the tactics used in "Fast and Furious" until after it was concluded in 2011.

On June 2, 2008, North praised Republican presidential candidate John McCain by saying: “In all the many months that I’ve spent covering these young Americans on the battlefield there’s only one candidate running for public office who I have seen in places like Ramadi or Fallujah. There’s only one candidate running for president of the United States who has said, ‘I will not fail you.’ There is only one candidate running for president of the United States who has said, ‘I have a formula for victory and I will not abandon your fight.’ I have heard him tell that to the young Americans he has seen and listened to on the battlefield. My friends, I don’t believe our nation can handle four years of Barack Obama. I don’t believe our nation can survive abandoning the cause for which these young Americans have fought.”

In a January 17, 2024 interview with Guns.com at the 2014 Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT Show), Nugent spoke about President Barack Obama, stating, “I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame, enough Americans to be ever vigilant, not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America.” Furthermore, he described President Obama as a “chimpanzee.” Nugent also spoke about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, stating, "Our politicians check their scrotum in at the door. Even Hillary, but obviously she has spare scrotums.” Nugent also stated, “The gun debate is about good people having the individual right from God, guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, to stop evil people. If you find fault with that you’re on the side of the evil people. Duh.”

In a November 12, 2023 op-ed for World Net Daily, Nugent blamed social welfare programs for a mass shooting at a barbershop in Detroit, Michigan, in which a man dressed in body armor shot and killed three people. Six others were wounded. Nugent wrote, “No one will say the trigger pullers are punks, thugs and urban degenerates … Rarely do you hear the president or his hapless vice president blame the murders and mayhem on those who pulled the trigger. Instead, they blame the NRA, institutional racism, the GOP, global warming, Wall Street bankers, spotted owls and adrift polar bears. The ugly truth is that urban street rats are responsible for the nightly shootouts in every large urban area in America. If [President Barack] Obama wants to blame something for this other than the punks who pulled the trigger, he might want to inform America that for the past 50 years social welfare programs designed, engineered and promoted by liberals have wreaked havoc on black families across America.” Contrary to Nugent’s claims, according to U.S. Census data Social Security checks lifted 21.4 million people over the poverty line in 2011 and unemployment benefits prevented 2.3 million Americans from falling below the poverty line.

In an October 14, 2023 interview on Gater 98.7, a Florida radio station, Nugent blamed President Obama for the record rate of veteran suicides, stating, “[W]hen you've got leadership that is the enemy of America, you've got the heroes of the U.S. military committing suicide at record numbers because their Commander-in-Chief is the enemy of the country. I mean it's so ugly right now, you got a bunch of pimps, whores and welfare brats running our government.” Nugent also spoke about the government shutdown, which began on October 1, 2023 when Congress failed to pass legislation funding government operations and agencies. Nugent made recommendations to fix the situation, stating, “I would love to see America run like the Nugent household. You get up early, you maximize your productivity, you be the best that you can be, you live within your means, you save for a rainy day and you don't be some gluttonous, slovenly, criminal, wasteful paycheck fire-torching bastard like most of the people in politics today … I celebrate that they're shut down because Fedzilla is a bloated monster. I would recommend and I think an honest review of the federal government would conclude the same that I have, and other thinking, caring people who understand the U.S. Constitution and how to run a household or how to run a business. That for every federal employee, let's put it this way, for every 5,000 federal employees, I could hire one person to do a better job. It is so wasteful. It's engineered obsolescence, it's engineered redundancy. The whole battle cry of the federal government is waste, corruption, fraud, abuse of power. So I'm glad it's shutdown … You can't run a family like that, you can't run a business like that. But Fedzilla is convinced they can operate with impunity. And I have a message for [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid and the President, ‘Eat me!’"

On September 17, Nugent tweeted, “Liberal democrats are soulless slavedriving scam artists bribing voters.”

In a July 31, 2023 op-ed for World Net Daily, Nugent endorsed the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery, stating, “More of us believe in the American hero Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s thorough investigation into your phony birth certificate and phony history than the phony media’s smoke and mirrors.” In July 2012, Joseph Arpaio, a controversial Arizona sheriff, announced that a "Cold Case Posse" under his direction determined that Obama's "long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and that it did not originate in a paper format as claimed by the White House." The "Cold Case Posse" reportedly attempted to uncover evidence that Obama was born in Kenya.

In the same editorial, Nugent said to President Obama, “[W]ith all due respect, your holy phoniness, who can’t see the terminal phoniness of wasting more tax dollars with more phony charges against George Zimmerman in defiance of your own FBI investigation and the same exhaustive evidence that proved his obvious innocence to the jury of his peers and everyone paying attention who was not blinded by your phony racism?” On July 13, 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter after shooting and killing unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida on February 26, 2012. After the trial, the U.S. Justice Department began investigating whether to file civil rights charges against Zimmerman.

Finally, Nugent suggested that Nidal Malik Hassan, the man responsible for a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, is President Obama’s “Allah Ahkbar buddy.” Hassan allegedly yelled "Allahu akbar!” which means “God is Great” in Arabic, before opening fire.

In a March 18, 2023 interview on a Lynchburg, Virginia talk radio show, Nugent stated, “When you have freaks like Bill Maher and the animal rights freaks, these brain-dead, doped up monsters, these mongers that think that they’re gonna tell Ted Nugent I can’t eat venison. Every time I hear the words ‘animal’ or ‘right’ in the same paragraph I kill more stuff.” Nugent also spoke about President Barack Obama’s public speaking abilities, stating, “If ever there was an ounce of truth that came out of Barack Obama’s mouth, he would be great speaker, but—much like Hitler—if you lie and you scam I’m afraid I can’t give you much credit for being a good anything.”

In a February 10, 2023 op-ed for World Net Daily, Nugent wrote that if a Republican President had the same policy on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) as President Barack Obama, “[Reverends] Jesse Jackson and Al Not-So-Sharpton would be lisping their ebonic mumbo-jumbo that the policy and the President are racist and bigoted … The ‘99-percenter’ crowd of intentionally unemployed Americans would move into Lafayette Park across the street from the White House, where they would pitch their tents and refrigerator boxes, ingest massive amounts of mind-altering chemicals and then try to storm the gates of the White House … The residents of East St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago and other cities would burn their own neighborhoods in protest … Representatives from NARAL, the pro-abortion group, would say had they known the Republican president was going to issue such an order, they would have wished their parents had aborted them … Liberalism is hypocritical poison, and it’s on full parade for all the world to see.” Drones have been used to kill foreign citizens as well as U.S. citizens overseas with alleged ties to terrorist activities. President Obama ruled out the use of drones to kill U.S. citizens on United States soil stating, “The rules outside of the United States are going to be different than the rules inside the United States.”

In a November 21, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent wrote, “In yet another never-ending series of terminal ding-dong moves, members of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union went on strike and drove Hostess out of business, providing one more stinking example of how labor unions can no longer have their cake and it eat it, too … Labor unions are bad for business. With just these four short opening paragraphs, the allergic-to-logic, empty Twinkie heads of anti-capitalism liberals are surely spinning ‘round and ‘round. They will ignorantly shriek that big business is greedy and needs more government regulation, that businesses have all kinds of obligations to their employees, that labor unions are still needed and that liberals know what is best for the economy … Unemployed long enough, even liberals with noggins full of economic balderdash put there by comedians Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, and liberal college instructors who have never owned or managed a business will begin to understand that anti-business, pro-union liberalism doesn’t pay the rent. Ding-dong that.” Hostess, the maker of Twinkies and Ding-Dongs, filed for bankruptcy in January 2012. On November 9, 2012, Hostess employees went on strike after the company imposed a contract cutting worker’s wages by 8 percent and benefits by 27 percent to 32 percent. In mid-November 2012, the company began selling its factories and assets. Hostess also began laying off its 18,500 workers.

In a November 8, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent wrote about the reelection of President Barack Obama, stating, “We have fallen far and fast. Instead of electing a serious-minded, proven professional, America went once again with a guy whose most impressive qualification is that of a questionable ‘Chicago’ community organizer. I don’t mean Chicago in a geographic sense. President John F. Kennedy would have been appalled … We have decayed into a nation of gluttonous, soulless pigs who feast on whatever Fedzilla provides by taking from one group of Americans (the producers) and giving to others (the takers) who haven’t earned it and don’t deserve it … The pigs have come home to wallow in the mud of the Washington swamp, and we have a group of professional political punks—master scam artists—who are all too happy to shovel more slop while advocating that the producers should be punished further by raising their taxes and restricting entrepreneurs with business-wrecking overregulation … I’m not nearly as surprised with the outcome of the presidential election as I’m disheartened and disgusted that my fellow Americans can be this woefully uninformed, easily manipulated and thunderously ignorant. I’ve got a rotting fence post smarter than these mouth breathers. If you voted for [President Barack] Obama, you are thunderously dumb and incredibly naïve … Thanks for nothing, numbskulls.”

In an October 30, 2023 interview with the Washington Times, Nugent spoke about social welfare programs, stating, “We are all heartbroken that the Herculean work ethic that…made America The Last Best Place has dwindled considerably since the big lies of The New Deal and The Great Society succeeded in brainwashing a segment of our country to believe Fedzilla would provide for anyone who decided, for whatever reason, to not be productive.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal was responsible for creating the Social Security Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Housing Administration, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was responsible for the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, and a variety of other anti-poverty programs. These programs drastically reduced the rate of poverty nationally. Nugent also spoke about his hometown of Detroit, Michigan, stating, “It is so very true that my birth city of Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive, there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down that same path. Truly amazing.”

On October 17, 2012, Nugent tweeted, “Apparently soulless liberals & zombie democrats dont care that their president lies thru his teeth. Go Mitt [Romney].”

On October 10, 2012, Nugent tweeted, “Yeah thats it-The FtHood massacre was a workplace act of violence Yeah, thats the ticket Goodcall gang Obama lying enemies of America. damnU.” Nugent was referring to a mass shooting at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009. In that shooting, Nidal Hassan, an Army psychiatrist, killed 12 people and wounded 30 others after legally purchasing a handgun and ammunition. The Department of Defense classified the shooting as “workplace violence.”

In an October 8, 2023 radio interview with Rusty Humphries, Nugent stated, “You know why you love my greasy soulful black soul music? You know why you love it so much? Because on all my Gibson guitars, I have illegally imported Indian fretboads. That's one thing I demand from Gibson is that if they are going to make me a guitar they will use illegally imported wood so that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife has a conniption fit every time I play." Nugent was referring to several U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department raids on the guitar maker Gibson for importing endangered wood. Nugent told Humphries that one of his new songs was about how, “The whole word sucks, but America still sucks less and if we don’t get these gangsters out of the White House we’re gonna suck ourselves to death … [Government is] so out of control now, the new normal is offensive, vulgar, obscene, and anti-American at the hands of a community organizer who is intentionally dismantling the greatest quality of life in the history of mankind.” When asked what he thought of polls that showed President Barack Obama holding a slight lead over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Nugent replied, “Well, when you read those kind of manipulated and dishonest polls it actually does increase confidence [in Mitt Romney] because the leftist media is so addicted to dishonesty and misrepresentation and manipulation … I believe there’s more of us than the bloodsuckers that [President] Barack Obama and his gangsters have bought and paid for and if that offends somebody who is listening to Rusty Humphries and Ted Nugent, you need to get a clue because this president has bought his votes by offering something from the productive Americans to the non-productive Americans … If you look at the average voter for Barack Obama, he’s either receiving something from the taxpayer or he’s an elected official or government employee that is being overpaid.” Turning to the topic of his family, Nugent stated, “We shoot pretty much every day. I shoot every day … Unarmed citizens are slaves so we take our shooting very seriously.”

In an October 4, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent wrote, “Not so amazing, but the backbone of the Democratic Party, the ones buying the most lottery tickets, are the ones who can least afford it. Duh. If these mouth-breathers promise not to vote, the GOP should buy them a lottery ticket. That would be cheaper than trying to reach them with political ads. The Democrats are once again playing class warfare. Jacking the poor and downtrodden against wealthy Americans is a core Democratic political strategy … The message the Democrats send to their base is that wealthy Americans are to be despised, maligned and punished. The Democratic Party will never admit that wealthy Americans might just be smarter, have a greater tolerance for risk and a stronger work ethic than supporters who carp about how the system is rigged against them and seek a fantasy of ‘shared opportunity.’ Show me where life is fair and I will vote for President Obama. The only things rigged against these comfortably dumb Americans is the image staring back in the mirror and the Democratic Party, which has intentionally enslaved and victimized them for decades … To demonize wealthy people is to spit in the face of the American dream. You might want to note that there is no demonization of the wealthy from Republicans, only Democrats.”

In an October 2, 2023 radio interview on 101 KXL, a Portland, Oregon news radio station, Nugent stated, “[Michigan] turned into a liberal cesspool of slovenliness and gluttony and just entrenched irresponsibility…the opposite of what I grew up in Michigan … Positive spirit and entrepreneurial work ethic…is still alive and well in Michigan, it’s just been overwhelmed by the pimps and the whores and the welfare brats.” Nugent continued, stating, “I couldn’t be more proud, in 2012, hippies and communists hate me. They hate me, which means I’m really really a good person.” When asked what he would do if President Barack Obama won the election in November 2012, Nugent replied, “I’ve saluted too many flag-draped coffins to give up. I’ve spent too much time with U.S. Marines with no legs and Army heroes with no arms and Navy and Air Force and Coast Guard and National Guard guys who have given up everything to give up … If Barack Obama gets back in, I’ll just turn up the heat and fight to demand the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and that ‘We the People’ get more engaged and take this country back from these criminals. Barack Obama and [U.S. Attorney General] Eric Holder and [U.S. Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton and [U.S. Treasury Secretary] Tim Geithner and other czars, they’re all America-hating punks. They hate this country. They hate freedom. They hate excellence. They hate entrepreneurialism. They hate genuine effort. They think there’s somehow some kind of fairness available where people who don’t try as hard somehow benefit the same way as people that try really hard. That’s just buffoonery. That’s just a Karl Marx [author of the ‘Communist Manifesto’], [Former Leader of Communist China] Mao Tse-tung insult.” Nugent, by his own account, evaded being drafted for the Vietnam War in the 1970s by taking controlled substances and smearing his body with feces before a fitness exam.

In an October 1, 2023 interview with Big Hollywood, Nugent stated, “[President] Barack Obama hates America. Barack Obama hates freedom. Barack Obama's voting record, his upbringing, his education, his words, his actions, his misdeeds, all reek of everything anti-American, anti-Constitution, anti-Bill of Rights. The latter of which is most deviously manifested in his voting record against the individual right to keep and bear arms … America faces doom if we re-elect Barack Obama to the presidency. It is a dire, dangerous forecast for freedom … If he wins in November he won't have to kowtow, he won't have to placate anybody anymore. He will be able to go for the jugular, and that includes the jugular of the Second Amendment. He will begin again what he did in Illinois as a gangster politician and go against gun rights, he will tax ammunition, he will ban certain types of bullets, and he will ban certain types of firearms. His goal is Attorney General Eric Holder's goal: namely, to brainwash Americans into believing that guns are bad and that the Second Amendment does not mean individuals have the right to keep and bear arms. Barack Obama is a smoke-and-mirrors scam artist who has convinced people he believes one and one equals two, while he shoves three-and-a-half down your throat … In November 2012, we are voting for [Republican presidential candidate Mitt] Romney/[Republican vice presidential candidate Paul]Ryan because we are voting for the very soul of America. If Barack Obama is elected again, this country is done." Nugent was referring to a speech Eric Holder, then-U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, gave to the Woman’s National Democratic Club on gun violence in 1995. Holder stated, “We want to have…an informational campaign to change the hearts and minds of people in Washington, D.C. and particularly young people. They are saturated in the media and entertainment, or by the entertainment industry, with violence. And I think too many of our young people, in particular our young men, are fascinated with violence, and in particular fascinated with guns. What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes. When I was growing up, people smoked all the time…but over time we changed the way people thought about smoking…and that’s what I think we need to do with guns, really change the way people think about them … This is not going to be something that’s very easy to do, because we are, quite frankly, fighting something that appears every day on television, on the radio, in our popular music, in movies that these kids are exposed to … We need to get really innovative, really creative things that are gonna grab the attention of these kids and change, as I said, the way in which they think about guns … I have asked the school board to make a part of every day some kind of anti-violence, anti-gun message. Every day, every school, at every level. One thing I think is clear with young people, and adults as well, is that we just have to be repetitive about this … We need to do this every day of the week and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”

In a September 27, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent wrote, “[Republican presidential candidate]Mitt Romney hit the bull’s-eye with his comments regarding the 47 percent of Americans who do not have any skin in the game as it pertains to paying federal income tax. Facts are facts … As I’ve written before, for at least the past 50 years the Democratic Party has intentionally engineered a class of political ‘victims’ who have been bamboozled into being dependent on the federal government for their subsistence, including food, housing and now health care. They get this without paying any federal income taxes, and that’s wrong. Something for nothing is always a scam. This is how you buy votes, plain and simple … Alternatively, the majority of federal income taxes are paid by the top wage earners, the very group of individuals the Democrats and President Obama constantly demonize and want to punish by raising their taxes even higher. This is what’s called ‘fair’ in this bizzarro world. Those who pay nothing can continue to pay nothing, and those who pay all will pay more … The Democratic Party exists because it promotes the creation of dependence on Fedzilla. They have intentionally created the real political victims, many of whom have been victimized by the Democrats for decades … Through the creation of the Nanny State, the Democrats have destroyed lives, families and entire communities, and convinced some Americans that they can’t achieve anything without Fedzilla’s help. They have their own soulless Declaration of Dependence. That’s downright pathetic. While creating this voting bloc of handcrafted victims, the Democrats have also waged an artful campaign to paint Republicans as a group of arrogant, greedy rich people. Some Democrats like Vice President Joseph R. Biden take their venom-filled lies about the GOP even a step lower … He’s a race-baiting yarn-spinner. He should be made to wear a dunce hat and stand in the corner for the remainder of the campaign … No able-bodied American should get anything for free while doing nothing to earn it. Put a rake, shovel, paint brush or broom in their hands. That will instill some pride back in their lives that the Democrats have worked double-time to make extinct … What Fedzilla has done to individuals and businesses is not a victimless crime. It’s killing America.” Nugent was referring to controversial comments Mitt Romney made at a private fundraiser in May 2012. Romney stated, “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it –that that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. ... These are people who pay no income tax. ... [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

In a September 1, 2023 interview with Patriot Update, Nugent stated, “The Fourth Amendment is trampled on all the time … Do you know that game wardens, who I adore and have great respect for, they’re heroes of law enforcement – most of them—law enforcement agents of Game Department can come into your house without a search warrant, without just cause. Maybe cause they don’t like you. Maybe you’re the wrong color. Maybe they don’t agree with your politics. Maybe they don’t like your music. It doesn’t matter the reason. A law enforcement official of Game Departments of the United States of America do not respect and are not limited by the Fourth Amendment … They don’t need just cause. They don’t need a search warrant. They can cut the lock on your gate–while you’re home or you’re not home. They can break into your freezer and examine the meat and see if it’s legal. On a hunch. On a rumor. Or just on a bad day … So that’s offensive on all levels but there’s also some other jack-booted Gestapo maneuvers going on these days like the Gibson raids … While we’re sitting here, my email’s going [noise] blowing up with stories of heartbreak: where a teenager, who’s never broke the law in his life, who’s never been in trouble with the law in his life, his family [is] law-abiding, their family has been bankrupted because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife thugs, the same ones that raided Gibson … Just the examples would gag you … When Governor [and Republican presidential nominee Mitt] Romney becomes Commander-in-Chief, I pray to God, along with a great Vice President, Paul Ryan … have got to look into these violations of civil rights and basic human rights at the hands of agencies gone mad … Vote Romney and Paul Ryan as president.” The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is subject to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment; however, some statutes give U.S. Fish and Wildlife agents authority to conduct warrantless searches. Nugent was referring to several U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department raids on the guitar maker Gibson for importing endangered wood.

Turning to the topic of sexual assault of minors, Nugent stated, “We’ve got to create community review boards for judges who keep letting child rapists out, when that judge knows if that child rapist is let out on the streets, he will rape again. And our court systems answer to that is to register them? To know where they live? In a neighborhood instead of a cage, instead of jail?” In 1978, Nugent began a relationship with seventeen-year-old Hawaii native Pele Massa. Due to the age difference they could not marry so Nugent joined Massa’s parents in signing documents to make himself her legal guardian. In 1998 interview with VH1, Nugent spoke about his “weakness for young women.”

In part two of the interview with Patriot Update, Nugent stated, “I hold the most important office on earth, ‘We the People.’ I am a we the people activist on behalf of my family, my neighborhood, my state, my country, and mostly that soldier in a box who died fighting for the U.S. Constitution. We all owe [that soldier] to make sure our elected officials abide by that document that he gave the ultimate sacrifice for.” Nugent evaded being drafted for the Vietnam War in the 1970s. Nugent then spoke about Kasim Reed, the Mayor of Atlanta, stating, “Me and old Kasim go way back. Kasim condemned me recently on one of the news shows … I love when the brown-shirts hate people saving Jews. Anyhow, the idiots and the America-haters hate me. That proves I’m doing God’s work because the devil is upset.” Regarding The Badger State, Nugent said, “Wisconsin is the guiding force and light for what America should be doing, between Scott Walker as Governor, Paul Ryan as Congressman, and now the Senator Tommy Thompson. America should go the way of Wisconsin because Wisconsin turned into a lump of liberal snot hair, just embarrassing. Everything was wrong with it and then come from the debris came Scott Walker.” Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, whom Nugent refers to, appeared on “Meet the Press” and was asked about a comment Vice President Joe Biden made to a crowd in Danville, Virginia. Biden stated, “Every Republican’s voted for [the House GOP budget]. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they’re proposing. Romney…said in the first hundred days he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules, ‘unchain Wall Street.’ They’re going to put y’all back in chains.” Reed replied, “When Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan stands up to Rush Limbaugh…when they’re disparaging a Georgetown law student or stands up to Ted Nugent, really stands up to anybody or stands up to Donald Trump, then I’ll be willing to have a conversation about a comment that the vice president made.”

In an August 29, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent wrote, “The root of evil is not the want of money, but rather a government that thinks it knows better than free-thinking individuals how best to provide for our well-being. Socialists like [President Barack Obama] use the law and courts to force their failed big-government ideas on those of us still helplessly drunk on freedom, rugged individualism and liberty. You know, the American way. Socialists argue that fairness is the goal. For their version of fairness to occur, socialists must take the earnings and wealth from one person who earned it and give it to another who has not. Karl Marx would be proud of Mr. Obama. We would be wise to remember when then-Sen. Barack Obama was campaigning for the presidency and told Joe the Plumber, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” Those are the words of a socialist who learned his lessons well from his socialist upbringing and on the streets of Chicago as a community organizer … Socialists are punks who think they are smarter than ordinary Americans and that ordinary Americans are so dumb they need to be managed by Fedzillacrats in Washington. These punks are smug, arrogant and wrong … Join me at the dead-end brick wall of freedom and liberty. Let’s ring the Liberty Bell once again. Educate and remind all the people you know every day that if they’re not registered to vote and they fail to vote Romney-Ryan, the socialists win. And the shining city upon a hill comes tumbling down.”

On August 25, 2012, at a concert in Fort Worth, Texas, Nugent stated, “I vow that I will use our freedom to get these dirty [expletives] out of the White House. The president is a bad man. The vice president is a bad man. They’re all bad people. If you don’t get that, you’re a dead [expletive]. If you don’t get that, get out of Texas. Move to Illinois … It’s time to celebrate the taking back of America in 2012 … The whole word sucks, America just sucks less.” While holding up a machine gun, Nugent said to the crowd, “All the skinny girls get a free machine gun tonight. The big girls can load them.” Turning to another topic, Nugent stated,“This is an illegal Gibson guitar, the game warden told me it was illegal. They’re soulless [expletives]. Those spineless, soulless pieces of [expletive] from the Wildlife Agency should take me down now, because all of my Gibsons are made of dangerous species. This one is made of platypus! My audience will beat them within an inch of their lives. Is that illegal? [Expletive], it’s just entertainment!” Nugent was referring to previous U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department raids on Gibson for importing endangered wood.

On August 21, 2012, at a concert in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Nugent addressed “everybody addicted to freedom out there,” stating, "Let's see if in November, we can't [tick] off the [jerks] in Washington, D.C. Let's send Barack Obama down to Cuba. They've already got socialism down there — just move down there. You're [screwing] up my country."

On August 7, 2012, at a concert in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Nugent told the crowd that he and his band members spend months each year performing. “The rest of the year, I just kill shit,” Nugent added. He also spoke about President Barack Obama, stating, "I wanna get rid of the dirty cocksuckers in the White House! If there's justice, Barack Obama will end up being a communal worker in Cuba!” Finally, Nugent stated, "The only thing missing in this world is more dead fucking assholes!"

On August 6, 2012, Nugent Tweeted, “Its official-democrats are addicted to flying over the cukoos nest at all costs, hell with truth logic honesty or anything good for America.”

At an August 6, 2023 concert in Clearwater, Florida, Nugent told the crowd, “It's 2012. What are you going to do? They're coming up your streets, jackboots stepping high, looking in your windows. What are you going to do? Put a [expletive] gun in your hands!” Nugent also bragged, “I killed enough deer last year to send venison to the American military. So, thank you, Uncle Ted. When they eat Ted Nugent meat, they kill more [expletive]." Nugent also spoke about the 2012 presidential election, stating, “I promise I will use that freedom to do everything in my power to clean the criminal [expletive] out of the government. Barack Obama will be a community organizer again. Let's vote the [expletive] out of here!" Finally, Nugent said to a woman who frowned during one of his hunting stories, “You voted for Obama, didn't you? … More [expletive] needs to die.”

In an August 2, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent wrote about proposed reforms in the wake of a mass shooting that occurred at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012. In that shooting, severely mentally ill gunman James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 58 others. Nugent commented, “According to the kind, caring and considerate left, you have every right to be a crazy druggie and roam the streets with no means of support. Heck, they even help nut-jobs occupy Wall Street and beyond. Surely, the unarmed and helpless will someday bring peace to the world, end world hunger and Rodney King’s dream of everyone getting along will become a reality. No wonder they call it dope. Years ago the left clamored that mental institutions violated the rights of those with mental illnesses. The American Civil Liberties Union even sued on their behalf. The result was the doors of the cuckoo nests were flung open and the patients stumbled out. Now they are everywhere. You can’t visit any city in America without encountering dirty people who are severely mentally impaired roaming the streets. Pushing shopping carts, mumbling to themselves, sleeping under bridges or in parks and basically being a nuisance, they ultimately endanger themselves. Most are not violent, just certifiably crazy by anyone’s standards. The real discussion that needs to occur in America is how we finally throw off the shackles of political correctness, quit worrying about ‘feelings’ and simply restrict the rights of psychotics by making it easier to lock them up for their safety and the safety of others. Advocating additional gun laws and gun-free zones is crazy. Crazy talk like that can get you killed.” Rodney King was an African-American construction worker who was beaten by Los Angeles police officers during a traffic stop in 1991. Four police officers from the LAPD who took part in the incident were later tried. Three of them were acquitted, and the jury failed to reach a verdict regarding the fourth. The acquittals are generally considered to have triggered the 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which 53 people were killed, and over 2,000 injured. During the riots, King appeared on television and asked, "Can we all get along?"

In an email interview published July 9, 2023 in Michigan Live, Nugent responded to a question about threatening remarks he had made towards President Barack Obama and Democrats by stating, “I have been deeply involved in this tragic culture war raging in America for a very long time. I am painfully aware of the criminal abuses by the president, his attorney general and most of his administration. Anyone unaware of these violations is either brain-dead or woefully disconnected from reality. I know what I am doing and I know what I am saying. I meant it then and I mean it now.” He also spoke about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s chances of winning Michigan, stating, “Even those feeble-mined [sic] Michiganiacs on the receiving end of the government’s communist offenses of redistribution are waking up to how unfair and suicidal this system is for any meaningful quality of life in MI and America. This waking up is alarming all smart people to the disastrous results of the liberal democrats' destruction of our great state. By any honest scrutiny, Romney will stop this destructo derby and re-institute some accountability.”

At a June 29, 2023 concert in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Nugent told the crowd, “The way that a--hole in the White House hates me, I must be perfect.” He also stated that if concert goers wanted to help out the military, this November they should “vote the constitution-violating pieces of s--t out of the White House … We’re either independent or dependent pieces of s--t.”

In a June 22, 2023 radio interview on KMOX, a St. Louis news radio station, Nugent told the host, Mark Reardon, “You notice, I just get up in the morning, I go to work, and idiots blow up. I don’t try to make idiots blow up. I just do the right thing, state the truth and celebrate logic and idiots go berserk. I’ve never been more proud of myself in my life.” When Reardon asked Nugent about threatening remarks he made against President Barack Obama and Democrats at the 2012 NRA Convention, Nugent replied, “Like I said, I just get up in the morning and I go to work and I make the national news because I dare to celebrate self-evident truths and, more importantly in 2012, more importantly now than ever, because remember there’ve been more criminals in our government right now, to spotlight the cockroaches. There are more cockroaches, more criminals, more corrupt power abusing punks in our government right now. And if you don’t get that, move to Canada. It’s just unbelievable. So I, as a ‘We the people’ guy, obligated by the heroes of the military who sacrificed so I can have these First Amendment freedoms, I’m gonna use my First Amendment freedoms and I’m gonna identify that the number one cop in this country is a felon … [U.S. Attorney General] Eric Holder is the enemy. Obama is the enemy. [Secretary of the Treasury Tim] Geithner is the enemy … I stand by every word I said.” Nugent also spoke about the “soulless, spineless weenies” at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, stating that he was charged with illegally shooting, killing and transporting a black bear for “dar[ing] to stand up for my Second Amendment rights.” He signed a plea agreement with federal prosecutors and agreed to a $10,000 fine and a two-year probation. Nugent then turned his attention to female Democrats in the House of Representatives, stating, “The [U.S. Congresswoman Debbie] Wasserman-Schultz and the [U.S. Congresswoman] Sheila Jackson-Lees, by the way, have you ever watched all of my haters talk? Each and every one of my critics is an absolute subhuman buffoon. If you watch the way they speak and the little spittle forming in the corners of their mouths, these are entrenched, addicted haters of freedom. Which is why they hate me. They’re on record to quote and worship Mao Tse-tung.” In fact, neither Congresswoman has quoted Mao Tse-tung. Nugent also added, “I love killing game with guns. I have my own Ted Nugent ammo coming out so, I’m gonna do a lot more gun hunting.” When asked when the ammo was coming out, Nugent replied, “That should be on every vegetarian store’s shelf by mid-July.” When Reardon remarked on Nugent’s endorsement of the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, Nugent replied, “My conversation with Mitt Romney convinced me…he will get this Mao Tse-tung gang out of the destructo-derby suicide mission that Barack Obama’s steering this country.”

In a June 13, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent offered presidential candidate Mitt Romney advice on attracting the Latino vote. He stated, “The key to attracting Latino voters is to appeal to their sense of independence and to inform them the GOP believes in the power of the individual, not Fedzilla whose track record is one of dependence and destruction.” Nugent continued, stating, “Mr. Romney should continue to press for education reform, and remind Latino voters that education is vital to success. He should illustrate the importance that Americans of Asia-Pacific descent place on education and how fast their children move into the middle class. It doesn’t have to be an Asian thing … Mr. Romney should also hammer away at the welfare state that Democrats have largely created and continue to support. He should tell Latinos the welfare state is fiscally unsustainable and creates dependence instead of independence. Mr. Romney has little to lose by illustrating how Fedzilla has wreaked untold havoc on black America.”

In a June 5, 2023 radio interview on WJBC, a central Illinois station, Nugent stated, “The whole world sucks, America sucks less. But we’re catching up because we have a president who will quote the founder of communism and recommends that the government redistributes people’s earnings. Then he’ll visit the Vietnam Memorial Wall and lie claiming that he wants to thank 58,000 dead American soldiers and Airmen and Marines and Seamen while he quotes the man they fought against.”

In a May 15, 2023 editorial for the Washington Times, Nugent lamented “California’s financial nightmare (and the nation’s)” which he attributed to “a terminal addiction to bloated and expensive government completely out of control, with zero accountability.” He announced “Liberalism has failed around the world, and it has failed here, too. Big government has been a big bust. Yet, for liberals, the solution is even bigger government.”

In an October 9, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent wrote, “In a world strangled by the curse of politically correct denial, dopey liberals in media and academia have brainwashed a strange subspecies of beings into accepting and embracing the pathetic condition of being unarmed and helpless. The slaughter rages on in gun-free zones around the world. Shame. Here’s a lifesaving alert to the dependent masses: Unarmed and helpless is unarmed and helpless. The evil guys running amok here, there and everywhere appreciate you very much, for they are assured in your gun-free zones that you are incapable of doing a darned thing when they decide to eat you alive, beat you to death, rape, rob, assault, torture and do with you as they wish, for you, my poor pathetic sheep, have chosen to be unarmed and helpless. To bow before evil is as soulless as soulless gets. No thank you. Those of us who dearly appreciate the precious gift of life follow our powerful instincts for self-preservation and have made it a priority to be ready to defend ourselves. Those on the lunatic fringe can squawk and moan all they want; the rest of us need no interpretation of ‘keep and bear.’ ‘Keep’ means it’s mine, and you can’t have it, and ‘bear’ means one thing and one thing only: I have one or two on me, and they’re loaded. Drive safely … For the brainwashed cult of denial drooling in the shadow of a gun-hating media and White House: With all this unprecedented increase in guns and ammo in American citizens’ hands, the use of guns in crime is at an all-time low.”

In a March 5, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent wrote, “Just as the homosexual community has co-opted the word ‘gay,’ various leftists, socialists and Marxists have co-opted the word ‘progressive.’ Words mean things. If you read the definition of ‘progressive,’ conservatives and the Tea Party are the real progressive force in America, as we are the ones advocating substantive upgrade, improvement and reforms in the stinky, status-quo swamps of Washington … As President Reagan would surely have said, Mr. Obama and his left-wing cohorts are not the solution, they are the problem. Alternatively, the real progressives, the Tea Party, advocate a more fiscally responsible federal government and a government that stays in its constitutional lane that was very carefully spelled out by our Founding Fathers.”

In a January 30, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent praised Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich, writing, “I am impressed with each of them for a variety of reasons and adamantly believe that any one of them would be monstrously superior to President Obama, who has charted a course for the destruction of America as we know it.”

In a January 9, 2024 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent wrote, “Diversity is America’s greatest strength, according to the left and its socialist, Marxist, commie cohorts and co-conspirators running rampant across the country. If you listen carefully to these America-hating, social-engineering liberals, virtually all behavior, conduct, morals and beliefs make America stronger. This, of course, is toxic, brain-dead logic that leaves ordinary Americans shaking and scratching their heads in confusion and disgust. We recognize bull dung when we hear, see and smell it, and we have no desire whatsoever to embrace it … The left is forcing its version of diversity throughout our society and culture. According to the left and its acolytes, we are supposed to respect people who refuse to respect Old Glory or learn English, look for a job or put forth the effort to do an honest day’s work. We are supposed to respect all cultures, values, laws and religions—even when they have proved throughout history to be dangerous and diametrically opposed to our American way of life, customs, laws and traditions. It will be a cold day in hell before I embrace voodoolike religions and unclean stone-age cultures that retard progress instead of advancing it. The real issue is that by forcing diversity and multicultural nonsense in our workplaces, schools and government agencies on people who still cherish common sense and traditional American values, we’re ripping the nation apart.” Nugent went on to claim that Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement that some critics of President Obama are motivated by race is “the ultimate act of racism.” He continued, “I respect diverse people who respect and cherish basic American customs, traditions, goodwill and values. I have no respect for left-wingers who employ intimidation to make multiculturalism or diversity mandatory as the law of the land. The diversity punks believe in racial set-asides and preferences. You won’t ever solve discrimination by engaging in reverse discrimination. Maybe a racist like Jesse Jackson or Mr. Holder believes in reverse discrimination, but ordinary Americans do not. We are much too focused and intelligent to buy into such Jabberwocky. Real diversity, real change, real progress is accomplished by promoting and embracing Western culture, values and traditions, which is what made America great and created the greatest quality of life ever. Weakening this proven methodology under the artful guise of diversity, multiculturalism and political correctness is every bit as insidious a threat to America as are voodoo-inspired terrorist punks.”

After blaming President Barack Obama for all of the nation’s economic woes in a September 30, 2023 op-ed for the Washington Times, Nugent stated, “Quite honestly, I couldn’t blame young people if they began to riot in the streets. I don’t want to see that, but I could understand it ... The president will try to con young people again into believing that he and his fantasy-driven socialist policies will somehow magically create an environment where the economy will improve and jobs will reappear … Young Americans looking to start their lives are learning some cold, hard lessons. Things could get ugly, and I wouldn’t blame them if they began fighting in the streets. The conditions are perfect.”

During a September 9, 2023 appearance on BBC Radio, Nugent said, “The American dream is based on putting your heart and soul into being the absolute best that you can be. I am convinced that the Republicans in general—and [2012 Republican presidential candidate] Rick Perry, specifically—represent that spirit and that spirit is alive and well across this country. And if we just went to the core of those that are collecting unemployment checks that will look you right in the eye…and go, ‘Yeah, there’s a bunch of jobs I can take, but why bother? I’m getting a pretty good check as it is and they’ll give it to me for two years.’ Do you realize that curse is widespread in this country? But Rick Perry, as a servant of we the people in Texas, respects the basic premise that an able-bodied American should dedicate themselves to be productive.” Nugent also stated that Rick Perry “is the great white buffalo. The fact that it is ‘great white buffalo’ has nothing to do with ethnicity. The great white buffalo was a Native American legend of a mystical beast that found the battered herd and led ‘em across the land.” Finally, Nugent predicted that “America will come to grips that America needs to look like Texas ... Some of the greatest hunting in the world plus there’s no income tax plus I can carry a machine gun in my truck. I mean, how could you not move there?”

In a January 8, 2024 interview on the Peter Schiff radio show, Nugent stated, “I drive the left batty. My mere existence causes them much and anguish so I couldn’t be more proud … We could go on and on about the virtual insanity of this Democrat, leftist, socialist liberal cult of denial … I’ve spent too much time with the heroes of the military, and especially the heart-wrenching moments where we salute flag-draped coffins, who have died because they sacrificed everything for the U.S. Constitution and what it stands for. It’s as simple as that. And we have a government so out of control, so corrupt, so abusive of power and so unjust and illogical and anti-American in their every thought and action that I am dedicated more and more patriots across this country to show respect for these heroes of the military that sacrificed everything for the Constitution while our government offends the Constitution that they’ve taken an oath and avowed to.” Nugent, by his own account, avoided being drafted for the Vietnam War in the 1970s by taking controlled substances and smearing his body with feces before a fitness exam. In the interview, Nugent added, “The importance of focusing on the right to keep and bear arms really is the deciding factor in America versus the rest of the world. If the people in power, [New York Mayor] Michael Bloomberg, [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi, [Senator] Dianne Feinstein, [Attorney General] Eric Holder, when the people in power are dedicated to flagrantly, blatantly, unflinchingly, to force American citizens into unarmed helplessness and that’s their agenda, the Pelosis and the Eric Holders and the [President] Barack Obamas of the world, they don’t wanna save lives. They don’t care about reducing crime. They are absolutely obsessed with their hatred for firearms and the freedom that goes with it … It is gun-free zones, it is [Senator] Barbara Boxer’s dream, it is Dianne Feinstein’s and Barack Obama’s dream called the gun-free zone where the most innocent lives are slaughtered every time … Unarmed and helpless is an irresponsible and suicidal condition. If you believe that being unarmed and helpless is a desirable condition, then quite honestly, you have no soul. You must not respect the gift of life. You must not care about your family’s life.” Despite Nugent’s claims, one study found that only one-third of mass shootings (in which four or more innocents are killed) occurring between January 2009 and January 2013 occurred in “gun-free zones.”

In a January 3, 2024 radio interview on KMOX, a St. Louis radio station, Nugent spoke about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in which 20 first-graders and 6 adults were killed. He stated, “Anyone who would think that by increasing the environment, increasing the circumstances by which these horrific slaughters have taken place, 100% of the time. Gun-free zones are where these slaughters occur. What kind of mongrel—[New York] Mayor [Mike] Bloomberg—what kind of subhuman punk—[California Senator] Dianne Feinstein—would dare request more gun-free zones?” Despite Nugent’s claims, one study found that only one-third of mass shootings (in which four or more innocents are killed) occurring between January 2009 and January 2013 occurred in “gun-free zones.” Radio host Mark Reardon asked Nugent to respond to claims that individuals do not need semi-automatic assault weapons to hunt. Nugent replied, “You’d literally have to have traded your soul and your brain in for a sunbaked turd to make that kind of statement.”

In a May 1, 2023 interview with NRA News at the NRA Convention in Pittsburgh, Porter told host Cam Edwards, “I get a little antsy when we’re in there at the actual meeting. I want to get out and go to the store and play with all the toys like everybody else,” referring to the firearms displays in the convention’s exhibit hall. When Edwards asked him to address some of the “threats facing gun owners” Porter replied, “We’re still being treated like second class citizens by the United States government. And we’re going to make a concerted effort to really put some teeth into these legal victories that we’ve had. We still get nickel and dimed on some of these legal issues, and there’s no excuse in it … Now the trend is, with our enemies when they go into court, and the United States government’s position is this, is that the right to keep and bear arms is merely to keep a pistol for self defense in your home. I mean, you know, how silly is that? But, each and every road block they throw up in front of us, we’re going to knock it down and we’re going to more aggressively go after these impediments put up in front of us … There’s a small minority of people who happen to be governing now that are not for anyone possessing or having firearms other than themselves and it’s really an elitist type of viewpoint. But, we’re going to be more aggressive in bringing home these legal victories in Heller and McDonald to the rank and file member and to the everyday citizen in this country.” The Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, held for the first time in U.S. history that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to firearm ownership for self defense in the home. In McDonald v. Chicago, the Court held that the Second Amendment, as interpreted in Heller, applied to the States through the Due Process Clause.

In an interview with NRA News at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. on February 11, 2011, Porter stated, “When you got all the pig’s squealing, you know you’re doin’ somethin’ right. And that’s what we’re doin’ here. The more good things that we do, the more the opposition hollers and screams about it. You know we’re doin’ the right thing when we have them so worked up.” When asked about legislation promoted by the NRA that would force states to recognize the concealed handgun permits of other states, Porter said, “The government cannot protect us. People want the right to protect themselves, and it is just a basic human right.” Turning to the topic of the November 2012 elections, Porter stated, “Elections do have consequences and it’s vitally important to get a president in there that’s gonna appoint more people in the vein of John Roberts and Sam Alito rather than Elena Kagan … I think everybody got a wake up call after the Democrats took over Congress in 2006, and I think they had a huge shock when President Obama was elected in 2008. Most folks never would believe that there would be a run on our rights, our individual rights like there’s been in this country. And people are so concerned that where this government wants to take us is to a European socialistic, bureaucratic type of government. And it’s been a wake up call.”

In September 2011, Printz posted a photo. for his Facebook profile picture that depicts the barrel of a revolver facing the viewer. The caption on the image reads: "Liberals: This is the only view you need to see."

On January 16, 2010, Printz wrote a blog for the American Daughter Media Center and suggested that a states’ rights argument could be used to invalidate the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Printz wrote, “The only way the Dems can [implement health care reform] is to drag out the constitutional challenges until Obama, in a second term as president, may have a chance to replace two conservative Supreme Court justices with liberals. The American public must deny Obama a second term, and the certain destruction of states’ rights.”

On June 29, 2023 Printz posted a photo on Facebook that depicts George W. Bush and Dick Cheney using the waterboarding torture technique on then-Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Below the image, Printz commented, “I had a dream last night!!”

On November 8, 2008, Printz posted an image of a tombstone on his American Daughter Media Center blog. The inscription on the tombstone indicates that America died on November 4, 2008—the day that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. The cause of death was listed as “suicide.”

In a September 6, 2023 blog for the American Daughter Media Center entitled, “Fraternal Order of Police Endorses McCain!” Printz wrote, “Just to let you all know, there’s a thin blue line behind McCain.”

On September 25, 2012, Rathner tweeted “[Senate Majority Leader]@HarryReid is a disgusting human. How dare he attack [Republican presidential nominee] @MittRomney on #Mormonism. Reid is a disgrace. Proves #Dems will do anything to win.” Rathner was referring to a comment Harry Reid, a Mormon, made in September 2012 in which he agreed with a blogger who accused GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney of having "sullied" Mormonism with comments made in a hidden camera video. At a private fundraiser in May 2012, Romney was recorded saying, “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it—that that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. ... These are people who pay no income tax. ... [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

On August 2, 2012, Rathner tweeted, “#HarryReid is a dirt bag shill for [President Barack] #Obama, hopefully he has only a few more months as [Senate] majority leader.”

On June 5, 2012, Rathner Tweeted, “[Wisconsin Governor Scott] Walker is gonna smack down the unions in the Wisconsin recall election tonight. Public sector unions should be against the law.” He Tweeted again later that day, “Scott Walker and Republicans win in what looks like a landslide in Wisconsin Recall handing the unions their greedy heads on a plate!”

The Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) strongly opposed Ross’ nomination as attorney general because he had actively advocated against giving native Alaskans a preference in using certain bodies of waters for subsistence fishing (over those who fish for sport). AFN Co-Chairman Tim Towarak said then-Governor Sarah Palin’s nomination of Ross was equivalent to “rubbing our face on the ground, saying, 'Here, take this.’”

On November 8, 2023 Sigler, in his capacity as chair of the Delaware GOP, issued a statement about the “Occupy Wall Street” protests, which address increasing income disparity in America. Sigler was unhappy that the city of Wilmington, Delaware granted permits to protestors, writing, “I am very disappointed, but not surprised, that the City of Wilmington has allowed this so-called ‘occupation’ to go forward.” Additionally, Sigler claimed that the Occupy protest movement is tied to “selected radical and extremist causes, and certain left-wing organizations of questionable credentials.”

In an April 15, 2023 interview with NRA News at the NRA Convention in St. Louis, Walker stated, “It is vitally important in this election that we get people out on campaigns. We cannot sit still. If [President Barack] Obama’s reelected, he is going to appoint one to three more U.S. Supreme Court justices and a lot of people don’t think about the Supreme Court are who are supposed to be upholding the U.S. Constitution … And, the [District of Columbia v.] Heller case, we won it five to four. I don’t like that ratio. If Obama appoints one more Supreme Court justice we will lose our Second Amendment Rights as we know them for the rest of our life and without the Second Amendment all of our other rights are gonna go down the hill right behind ‘em.” The Supreme Court, in its 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, held for the first time in U.S. history that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to firearm ownership for self defense in the home.