Nugent, Trump and the Village People rock the National Mall. “Art” by AI.

Like every other holiday on the American calendar, the run-up to Halloween gets earlier each year.

Even so, Donald Trump doesn’t need it to be Halloween to get into costume. His All-In on AI makes it easy for him to feed his fetish for infernal role play, dressing up as a Top Gun pilot bombing shit onto homegrown “No Kings” protestors; Jesus Christ healing the sick; a lion tamer tackling a tiger. He posted this latest snatch of infamy last week after the tragic death of a mentally ill man in a British wildlife park.

The Brioni suits draped around Trump’s form and his outlandish coif already have the effect of costume party self-parody. Nonetheless, the MAGA masses crave more creativity from their Commander-in-Chief in the “real” world, like seeing him dress up as the Chief in the Village People. That might just be the move to energize the base for the midterms as disaster looms at the polls.

Instead, the Trump faithful must make do with the old routines, the soporific “weave,” the ever more unhinged bellowing and muttering.

Things were used to be different. Maybe RNC strategists have failed to resuscitate the cruel camp of 2020, for example, because it didn’t work out so well for Trump that time around. Don’t they realize that we’ve moved into a braver new world of role play and altered reality?

In other words, where’s Ted Nugent? Last week he was doing a voter registration event for Hunter Nation in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the governor’s race is a toss-up. He played a few tunes unplugged and ranted at the crowd about Christian values. It goes without saying that he wore camo. For Nugent, every day is Halloween.

Since Nugent had gone acoustic for Hunter Nation, the rabid audience had to do without the bone-rattling, blood-chilling sounds of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame non-inductee’s electrocuted fantasy on the National Anthem.

Back in 2020 Nugent was everywhere at Halloween, the fitting calendric prelude to early November federal elections.

Six years ago at Hallowween/Election time, Nugent worked his home turf of Michigan for the President. At a rally in the state capital of Lansin, the Republican Rocker donned his native costume of an insulated hunting cap and red-and-black Mackinaw jacket, though he chose not to wield a logger’s axe or one of his many beloved guns—from his grey-camo deer rifle to his signature red-white-and-blue American flag-themed assault AR-15 (the “upper assembly” of which retails for only $375). Instead, Nugent’s weapon of choice was his coveted Gibson Byrdland, perhaps even the same one deployed on many of his phantasmagoric solos, like that in “Stranglehold,” from back in the kinder, gentler Republican years of the Ford administration.

In Nugent’s life and works, guitar and voice and lyrics wreak felonious havoc on mind and body: “Here I come again baby / like a dog in heat,” he sing-screams in “Stranglehold” after his guitar has done the same. This Republican splits ears, not rails.

Nugent’s corpus is littered with corpses: “I am a Predator”; “A Thousand Knives”; “Bound and Gagged”; “I Shoot Back.” The body count is even higher than the decibels.

Nugent doesn’t have to wait until Halloween to play the monster: he’s an all-season demon, thriving on the feedback of his own infamy. At a concert in California in 2007, he taunted then-presidential candidate Barack Obama while raising an assault rifle in each hand: “Hey Obama, you might wanna suck on one of these, you punk.” The band’s drummer gave the line a ba-dump-tss. Whipped up by himself and the crowd, Nugent continued to tear into his foes like a rabid dog into raw meat: “Obama, he’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” His guitar swinging from his groin, Nugent then turned his full-loaded, psycho-sexual fury on women: “Hey Hilary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.” The frightening misogynistic revue continues with Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein: “Ride one of these, you worthless whore!” The fungibility of guitar, gun, and penis is hardly news. That Nugent is a dangerous nut in need of an immediate background check is as clear as his guitar is distorted.

Nugent served on the NRA board of directors from 1995 until 2021. At the gun lobby’s 2012 national convention, the rocker confided that “if Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” The Secret Service duly investigated.

That Lansing campaign appearance in 2020 for Trump came less than three weeks after the arrest of thirteen members of the Michigan Militia on terrorism, conspiracy, and weapons charges. The group had ties with Timothy McVeigh, and in 1995, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, Nugent praised its members: “I shoot with these people; I have been to target practice with them. I find them professional, hard-working people.” Nugent’s shouts of praise for the “real Michigan” rang out like covering fire for the arrested white supremacists.

Needless to say, Nugent was then a Trump favorite, even enjoying an audience in the Oval Office during the early days of Trump’s first administration. Never mind that few, if any, rockers or higher-ranking celebrities share their talents with Trump. Instead, real Hall of Famers like Neil Young have taken the president to court to try to stop him from plundering their songs for his political purposes.

Nugent is no longer being consistently deployed by Trump and his crime family. Bits of discontented feedback have even recently been heard in his vitriol that could be construed as critical of the president. Yet he is still out and about, free to spray his music and its automatic message like bullets from the barrel of one of his many guns.

This campaign season Nugent’s refrain has been “every gun law is illegal.”

It’s a sentiment shared across large swaths of rural America, making these pre-election Halloween weeks an increasingly unsettling period for politicians and trick-or-treaters alike, even when far the red glare of Trump’s hair and Nugent’s acoustic arsenal.

Trick-or-Treating in Upstate New York: “If you are seen here tonight, you will be found here tomorrow.”