Do we like Ted Nugent?
Our score: 1 out of 10. A long, loud run of his own words against trans people, Democrats and public-health measures, with little verified good to set against it.
Nugent is a Detroit-area kid who got his first guitar at nine, was opening for the Supremes at 13, and formed the Amboy Dukes in Chicago in 1965. Their psychedelic hit Journey to the Center of the Mind reached number 8 in 1968. He went solo in 1975, scored with Cat Scratch Fever, and later co-founded Damn Yankees. Loud guitar, loud hunting, loud NRA membership: the persona was set early.
On trans people he has been blunt and repeated. In 2022 he called trans women in women's sport “the work of Satan”. In April 2023 he tweeted that there is no such thing as transgender, and an Alabama brewery cancelled his farewell-tour show after an LGBTQ+ bar threatened to stop buying its beer. His reply to critics was to call them “liars & haters”.
The harm goes beyond trans issues. At a 2022 Trump rally he told the crowd he'd love them more if they “went berserk on the skulls of the Democrats”. The Daily Beast reported in 2014 that he called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel”. On public health, he told an interviewer that the Covid vaccine was “an experimental shot”, and ended the interview by mocking vaccinated listeners.
Then there is the underage-girls problem. In a 1998 VH1 documentary Nugent admitted to having sex with multiple underage girls, and his 1981 song Jailbait is about a 13-year-old. Courtney Love has repeatedly alleged that, as a child, she performed a sex act on him backstage. He says he doesn't remember it, no charges have ever followed, and it remains an allegation.
His court record is mostly hunting. In 2010 he pleaded no contest to two California misdemeanours, baiting a deer and not having a properly signed tag, and was fined $1,750. In 2012 he agreed to plead guilty over black bears killed in Alaska for his TV show, with a $10,000 federal fine, probation and a one-year hunting ban. Not nice, but not the stuff that decides this one.
Lately he has been feuding with fellow musicians. In January 2026 he called Green Day “idiots” while praising their playing, and said Tom Morello's side doesn't believe in secure borders. Vice reported he also accused Jack White and Eminem of wanting to let in people who “want to kill the infidels”, a claim it called baseless. That is the grievance slide the harm test looks for.