Right-wing rocker Ted Nugent expressed not a peep of concern for anybody he might have infected as he announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19.
“I have had flu symptoms for the last 10 days,” Nugent reported via Facebook Live on Monday evening. “I thought I was dying.”
That timing meant the people who had cause for concern prominently included South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.
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But hey, what’s a little COVID between anti-maskers?
A photo that Nugent’s wife, Shemane, posted to Facebook on April 13 shows the couple standing with Noem and big-time Repuiblican donor Greg Mosing and his wife, Donna, in front of a private jet. They were bare-faced and shoulder to shoulder, without an inch of social distancing,
“Thank you for a great trip with Governor Kristi Noem, on Rockstar One (think Air Force One!),” Shemane Nugent wrote.
The plane, a two-engine Canadair Challenger with tail N131GM, apparently either belongs to or is available for Mosing, who was sporting a Trump 2020 hat in the photo. Flight logs show that the plane took off at 10:20 a.m. from the airport in Naples, Florida. Nugent had streamed a live show from a restaurant there owned by a vocal anti-masker who had refused to require face coverings even when there was a county mandate. Noem was in Florida to address the Republican National Committee’s spring donor retreat, which was headlined by Donald Trump.
Two hours and 29 minutes after take-off, the plane landed at the airport in Waco, Texas, 13 miles from Nugent’s ranch. The plane then flew on to Pierre, South Dakota, where the governor’s mansion is, before going on to Lafayette, Louisiana, the Mosings’ hometown.
Noem’s spokesman responded only obliquely to an inquiry about the flight and whether Noem was concerned enough to get tested after flying that distance—presumably maskless—with somebody who subsequently tested positive.
“Governor Noem recently had her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and will receive her second dose very soon,” the spokesman said. “She self-monitors for symptoms daily and feels great.”
Noem did indeed receive a first shot on April 5, but that left her a second dose and a fortnight short of full protection. She doesn't seem to have quarantined herself as she returned to her duties.
Neither Greg Mosing nor Shemane Nugent responded to requests from The Daily Beast for comment. Others who might have been exposed by Nugent include the folks who attended his streamed event the night before at the Seed to Table restaurant in Naples.
Video on Facebook shows Nugent sitting with his wife and two pals at a table and chatting with a bus boy. Nobody was wearing a mask.
Nor was Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno as he joined Nugent onstage in front of the camera. He was in uniform. A mask would have hidden his smile as Nugent said something that would have caused any self-respecting cop to walk off the stage.
“My name is Ted Nugent and George Floyd killed himself,” the rocker said.
Nugent went on to say that Marceno had just come from an event for Noem.
“She is amazing, she is amazing, amazing,” Marceno said. “Her spirit, her charisma, who she is and what she stands for, second to none.”
He was not done.
“And you know what, God bless our governor, Ron DeSantis. Another one who stands up at all costs for what’s right.”
“The power of a Gov. DeSantis and a Gov. Noem is best identified by the defiance of stupid rules,” Nugent added.
He was apparently including rules such as wearing a mask or maintaining social distance to prevent people from infecting others, as Nugent may have been doing at that very moment and as he may have continued to do on the airplane with Noem the next day on the flight from Naples to Waco.
Nugent was at his ranch when he went on Facebook Live on Monday evening.
“I was officially tested positive for COVID-19 today,” he announced. “I got the Chinese shit.”
At least he was no longer calling COVID-19 a “leftist scam.” And whereas he once declared, “It's not a real pandemic,” he now spoke of a “global medical emergency.”
“I have never been so sick in all my life,” Nugent said. “I could barely crawl out of bed.”
Nugent recounted an exchange with his doctor prior to the test.
“Doc, all right, you want me to get tested? I haven’t been tested, haven’t taken the vaccine because nobody knows what’s in it… If I test positive, what will you do different [than] if I test negative?’” Nugent asked by his account.
“Nothing, but it’s good to know,” the doctor supposedly replied.
”Doc, you say it’s good to know,” Nugent says she told him. “What would be the good if you can't do anything different for me?... If it’s good to know, what good are you offering me? There’s no good. It’s not good to know. There’s nothing you’re going to do.”
Nugent paused and spit out some of the gunk that must have been building up in his lungs and could cause real trouble for a man who is 72. The spit could also infect anybody who happened to be around.
“Fucking goofballs,” Nugent said of his doctors.
He spit again and a doctor might have pointed out to Nugent that there was something he could do, that something good could come out of it if he took care not to make others sick. Nugent ended the Facebook Live appearance without offering even a hint of worry for anybody but himself.
That included his fellow anti-masker Noem, who was in South Dakota self-monitoring for symptoms.
