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During her tearful press conference Friday, Kathy Griffin compared her photo holding abloody Donald Trump headto Ted Nugents past comments that many interpreted as themusician joking about killingthe presidents predecessor.

In 2012, Nugent said, We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their [the Obama administrations] heads off in November. He also said, If Barack Obama becomes the next president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.

The musician called The Fox News Specialists on Friday to address Griffins comparison and defend his past statements.

On the idea that Griffins actions toward Trump and his concerning Obama were similar, he said, Its absolutely false.

Nugent said the Secret Service had looked into the matter. They concluded, absolutely conclusively, I did not threaten anybodys life, he said. According to the musician,Kathy Griffin and the whole left just repeat the lie that he threatened the presidents life.

Never happened, Nugent said.

Co-host Eboni Williams pressed Nugent on what he meant by comments made during a 2007 onstage rant, where he reportedly said, Obama, hes a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.

Nugent said in the Griffin situation, Trump and his family are just reacting to her vile actions, while his statement was just an outrageous metaphor.

Its good to see that everyone is condemning Kathy Griffins action, because it is nasty, he said. This is a world of terrorism where beheading is a reality.

Were talking apples and grenades here. I did nothing to harm anyone, he added. She came out with this symbolism that was truly vile.

So just to be clear, Nugent concludes that Griffinsunacceptable actions do notfall under the control of free speech. But hes totally cool with telling someone to suck on a machine gun. Thats just metaphor.

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Ted Nugent Condemns Kathy Griffin But Calls His Obama ...

George Clooney may have gotten some last-minute parenting advice on raising his first kids from the father of two former first children, Barack ObamaBarack ObamaDemocratic gubernatorial candidate touts progressive support in Virginia OPINION: Why President Trump should fear John McCain Report: Obama visited George, Amal Clooney in England MORE.

The former president paid a visit to Clooney and the actors wife, Amal, during a stop in England last month, according to People.

The couple reportedly welcomed twins, named Ella and Alexander, on Tuesday.

Obama, dad to 18-year-old Malia and Sasha, 15, reportedly stayed more than four hours at the Academy Award winners English estate in May.

Amal Clooney, a human-rights lawyer, gave birth to a "health, happy" pair on Tuesday.

"George is sedated and should recover in a few days," a spokesman tells People.

Its not the first time Obama and Clooney have hung out. The duo played basketball together following a 2012 fundraiser. Clooney, who supported Democratic presidential nominee Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonSchoolkids using Trump's words to bully classmates: report OPINION: Why President Trump should fear John McCain Man charged in attempt to obtain Trump tax records argues he 'encouraged' it MORE during last years White House race, is a big-time Hollywood political donor.

Obama has praised Clooneys humanitarian work, calling him a good man and a good friend.

Michelle ObamaMichelle ObamaThe Hill's 12:30 Report Report: Obama visited George, Amal Clooney in England Obamas buy their DC rental home MORE said in 2012 of the Gravity actor, Hes cute, too.

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Report: Obama visited George, Amal Clooney in England - The Hill (blog)

During Barack Obamas presidency, conservative doomsday peddlers cashed in on the paranoia they helped spread, selling firearms, prepper food, and survivalist gear to the followers they convinced that the end was near. Now, these apocalypse hucksters are facing a dilemma in the form of Donald Trump. While most enthusiastically supported Trumps presidential runsome even hailing him as a saviorthe Trump presidency has been damaging to their bottom lines.

Gun sales, for example, havenosedivednow that far-right activists cant claim that Obama or Hillary Clinton is this closeto confiscating guns and rounding up gun owners.

Michael Snyder, a conservative pundit and prepper,wrote in December thatsales of emergency food and supplies have been crashing since Donald Trumps surprise election victory.

In fact, he wrote, it is like a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community.

Its understandable that these merchants of doom would run into some problems following Trumps election. Many on the extreme Right predicted that Obama was dead set on imposing tyranny, cracking down on dissent, and crushing freedom, whether by invading Texas under the guise of the Jade Helm 15 military exercise or setting up death panels with a hidden provision of Obamacare.

Republican politicians and gun activists frequently warned voters that Obama was itching to do away with gun ownership.

Trump, quick to recognize the power of this fearmongering tactic,claimed on the campaign trail that Obama was thinking about signing an executive order where he wants to take your guns away. He alsoassertedfalselythat Hillary Clinton intended to abolish the Second Amendment, take your guns away, and take your bullets away.

Trump was far from the only Republican leader pushing this myth. Ted Cruzscampaignwarnedthat Obama wants your guns. In a mailer for the National Association for Gun Rights, Rand Paul egregiouslymisquoted Obamato claim that the president had said he would ban guns.

Without Obama or Clinton in the White House, gun activists have had to find new ways to scare people into stocking up on guns.

Now, they say, the threat isnt coming from the government, but from streets packed with anti-Trump protesters.

Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle AssociationtoldCPAC, one of the largest annual right-wing conferences, that militant leftists are rioting and committing acts of violence across the country. He warned that conservatives are being targeted as part of an anti-Trump purge.

Our long nightmare may not be over, he said. The fact is, it may just be beginning, because right now we face a gathering of forces that are willing to use violence against us.

Join the NRA, he said, to defend yourself against the violent left that seeks to bring their terror to our communities.

Jim Bakker, a televangelist notorious for his relentless promotion of prepper productsespecially buckets of survival foodhas warned viewers that those in the streets blaspheming Trump are demon-possessed and bent onviolence, potentially to the point of launching anew civil war.

If you want to be safe and theres rioting in your street, what are you going to do? Is your mom going to walk down through where theyre burning and killing and all? heasked.

Bakker also called on people who lived in Democratic areas of the country toprepare for the worstbecause God will punish their states for voting against Trump and the will of God.

If the violent leftist rampages never materialize, these doomsday peddlers will surely find a new reason for you to buy what theyre selling.

Brian Tashman is a senior research analyst at People For the American Way.

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With Obama gone, survivalists find new ways to sell the apocalypse - Salon

Video:

UI Commencement 2017

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Videographer: Holly Hart/Heather Coit

Nick Offerman shares his words of wisdom with the UI Class of 2017 at Memorial Stadium on Saturday morning.

By all accounts, actor Nick Offerman's commencement address at the University of Illinois was a hit, even making a couple of top 10 lists of graduation speeches this spring.

He'd actually been invited last fall, along with a certain former president who ended up sending his regrets in March.

Here are a few behind-the-scenes details about the effort to bring Barack Obama to campus, courtesy of the state's Freedom of Information Act:

-- The formal invitation to Obama went out on Oct. 28, 2016.

"Dear Mr. President," Chancellor Robert Jones wrote. "When we polled students for suggestions for their speaker, you were their first choice. You were also their second, third and fourth choices. As teenagers, they watched you break down barriers to become the first African American to lead their nation.

"In your second run," the statement continued, "you were the one who brought most of them out to vote in their first election. They grew up with you as their President. To them, you represent the power and possibility of the American dream."

-- It was a personal invitation as well from Jones, the first black chancellor in the campus' 150-year history, who recounted his own journey from a sharecropper's son to administrator at several land-grant universities.

"I know firsthand how difficult it can be to choose a path that others believe to be impossible, or worse, one they say that you have no right to follow," he wrote "... There is no one who better exemplifies what can happen when education and opportunity come together than you."

-- The letter was given to UI alumnus Michael Strautmanis, vice president of the Obama Foundation in Chicago and former chief of staff for Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. He was to hand-deliver it to Obama, and he and Jones spoke several times by phone over the next few months, records show.

-- The UI submitted a more "pro forma" request online through Obama's new website, obamaoffice44.org, after the former president left office in January, just to cover all the bases, spokeswoman Robin Kaler said Monday. UI students also lobbied Strautmanis and Obama through letters and social media.

-- The campus never received an official response to the letter, according to Kaler. But on March 17, the commencement office got an email from obamaoffice44.org stating that the former president would not be available.

"Thank you for your interest in including President Obama in your university's commencement plans. President Obama will be focusing on work for his foundation in the coming weeks and months, and although he will not be able to attend your event, he truly appreciates your invitation."

-- The UI didn't announce this news, instead sending out a tweet a month later, on April 19, teasing the commencement speaker:

"May want to pick up extra tickets for Commencement this year ... (sharing who our #ILLINOIS2017 speaker is April 25!)"

-- Kaler said officials still felt there was an outside chance Obama could say yes, since they hadn't heard anything directly. Plus, "the idea was to do a little bit of teasing, since people thought it might be President Obama."

-- UI students guessed pretty quickly it was Offerman after tweets featuring his co-star on "Parks and Recreation," Amy Poehler, and his passion for woodworking. Faculty weren't quite so tuned in. Even after a tweet showing the university seal altered to read, "City of Pawnee," the fictional Indiana town where the TV series was set, "we still had faculty calling to say, 'Is President Obama the speaker?'" Kaler said. "You could tell who was on social media and who wasn't."

-- Offerman had also been invited last fall but didn't realize it, as the message had "gotten lost somewhere along the way," Kaler said. Jones re-invited him in the spring, and he accepted. Offerman also agreed to produce a video used in the official Twitter announcement on April 25.

-- Schedules are tricky with celebrities, who get hundreds of such requests, Kaler said. Efforts to bring filmmaker Ang Lee and movie critic Roger Ebert to commencement in past years faltered because the event conflicted with the Cannes Film Festival, Kaler said. And before Hillary Clinton spoke on campus in 1994, the UI had given up on that invitation and invited another speaker until it learned just a couple of weeks beforehand that she was coming.

Read more:
Inside the UI's commencement pitch to Obama - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette

President Trump is winning on one key campaign promise, cutting regulations and virtually eliminating the release of new ones.

In fact, he has cut the output of costly regulations so deeply that a group that charts the federal government's output of rules has called the shift "historic."

American Action Forum told Secrets that Trump has cut the output of regulations to just 8 percent of the averages under former President Obama and other recent administrations.

What's more, the cost of the new regulations has dropped from an average of $26 billion to $33 million, or just 0.12 of the past average for the first five months of the year.

Sam Batkins, the director of regulatory policy for AAF, said in his report that "the Regulatory Freeze' that took effect on day one of the administration has persisted for roughly the first four months of President Trump's term. By virtually any measure, dating back through two Democratic presidents and one Republican president, the lack of regulatory output is historic."

In office, Trump ordered agencies to kill two old regulations for every one his team issued. But the new figures suggest that the administration has gone further. Departments like Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency have led the way.

Batkins based his study on the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) recording of cabinet-level regulatory output from 1994 to 2017.

"Across the board, the results indicate a significant diminution in the number of regulations approved and a notable uptick in the number of withdrawn measures (previous rules from the Obama Administration no longer under consideration). For instance, during the period covered, the average administration reviewed 190 rules; the Trump administration reviewed 39. In the average year, there were 33 economically significant reviews; the Trump administration reviewed just 16. On average, there were 30.8 significant rules approved, not just reviewed; this administration has released 10," said his AAF study.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com

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Historic: 90% cut in new regs, costs slashed to just 0.12% of Obama's - Washington Examiner