Watch a Supercut of Ted Nugent’s COVID-19 Denial Courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel
When Ted Nugent tested positive for COVID-19 this week, the musician’s detractors probably couldn’t help but feel some schadenfreude at the situation. After all, the 72-year-old “Stranglehold” singer, a comrade of former President Donald Trump and, following that same thread, a 2020 election denier, has frequently claimed the coronavirus pandemic isn’t real.
But rather than leave the musician to his circumstances, late-night TV’s Jimmy Kimmel couldn’t help but poke fun at Nugent. On Wednesday’s (April 21) Jimmy Kimmel Live, the show aired a compilation video of the times the Nuge has said that neither the pandemic nor the resultant vaccines are real.
“You know who could have used the vaccine is Ted Nugent,” Kimmel said. “Ted Nugent, a man who repeatedly claimed the pandemic wasn’t real, COVID wasn’t real — guess what? He has COVID. It’s real. He says he’s been very sick for the past 10 days. So let’s take a moment now to relive some of Ted’s golden COVID moments.”
In the video, clips from several of the “Cat Scratch Fever” rocker’s livestreams run together to highlight him calling the global health crisis “bullshit” and “not a real pandemic, and that’s not a real vaccine.” In one part, the musician says that “COVID 1 through 18 didn’t shut anything down — but, whoa, COVID-19!”
Still, in an April 19 Facebook Live video, Nugent confessed, “Everybody told me I should not announce this. I have had flu symptoms for the last 10 days. I just, I thought I was dying — just a clusterfuck. … I was tested positive today. I got the Chinese shit.”
But more recently, per Heavy Consequence, Nugent has said that he didn’t deny the coronavirus’ validity: “Saying that I claimed COVID-19 was a hoax, false,” the musician asserted in another Facebook Live. “We have actual footage of me saying … of course, there’s a Chinese virus. Hello? Who thinks that I claimed there’s no Chinese — there’s a Chinese virus, they call it COVID-19. I’m well aware of that.”
Catch Kimmel’s Nugent bit at about the 10:50 mark in the below video.