Musician Ted Nugent said Monday he tested positive for COVID-19 and had been experiencing intense symptoms, though he’s called the pandemic a “hoax” in the past.
In December 2020, the 72-year-old entertainer dismissed the global coronavirus pandemic as “scammy.” Monday, he changed his tune, mentioning the “pandemic clusterfu–.”
During the Facebook Live broadcast in which he announced his diagnosis, in fact, he used that colorful word twice.
“I have had flu symptoms for the last 10 days and I thought I was dying,” he told viewers. “Just a clusterfu–.”
Previously, Nugent declared that the ongoing global crisis was somehow “not a real pandemic” and people who choose to wear masks — often in compliance with local ordinances — are “sheep.”
Nugent is a political conservative who expressed support for former president Donald Trump’s policies and even performed at the Republican’s events. Trump, like Nugent, contracted COVID-19 at one point, requiring hospitalization last fall.
Nugent has attacked school shooting survivor and gun control advocate David Hogg and praised Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.
Earlier this month, Nugent expressed no fear of the virus in another Facebook Live, instead quipping, “Why weren’t we shut down for COVID one-through-18?”
Of course, COVID-19 was not named sequentially, but for the year the infection was initially reported, 2019.