Sarah Palin posted a series of photos on her Facebook page on Thursday, thanking President Donald Trump for the invitation and describing the visit as “a great night at the White House.” | Getty Palin invited Ted Nugent and Kid Rock to the White House because 'Jesus was booked'

President Donald Trump asked Sarah Palin to join him for dinner at the White House on Wednesday night “just to touch base,” and said she could invite a couple of friends — and so she brought musicians Kid Rock and Ted Nugent.

“Jesus was booked,” Palin, the former Alaska governor whose conservative populist appeal is sometimes compared to Trump’s, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday. “So, yes, I invited my buddies Kid Rock and Ted Nugent, some bold, courageous, all-American dudes who I knew would have good conversation with the president and get to express a lot of good, middle-class, work ethic-type issues and policy proposals that they could all relate to, and that’s exactly what happened at the dinner.”


Palin, the former Alaska governor whose conservative populist appeal is sometimes compared to Trump’s, posted a series of photos on her Facebook page on Thursday, thanking Trump for the invitation and describing the visit as “a great night at the White House.”

In one of the photos, Palin, Kid Rock and Nugent are gathered around Trump’s desk in the Oval Office; others show Palin talking to Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser.

And on Wednesday evening, she posted one of the three guests making faces in front of Hillary Clinton’s White House portrait from her time as first lady.

“Yeah, yeah,” Palin said Thursday on CNN. “I think the picture says it all.”

Palin put together a controversial guest list, considering that Nugent once called for the Oval Office’s last occupant to be hanged.

Inviting supporters and celebrities to dinner at the White House is far from unusual; former President Barack Obama famously hosted glamorous private parties there attended by the likes of Beyoncé, Meryl Streep and Stevie Wonder.

But Nugent has a history of stoking controversy with inflammatory remarks often condemned as racist, sexist or just generally out of line.

Notably, he has made comments interpreted as threatening Obama. In addition to describing the first black U.S. president at one point as a “gangster” and a “subhuman mongrel,” he said in 2012: “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

As for Clinton, Nugent has called her a “worthless b----.”

“Obama, he's a piece of s---,” Nugent said at a concert in 2007. “I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless b----.”

Last year, Nugent also called for both Obama and Clinton to be “tried for treason and hung” because of their handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Nugent, who like Palin supported Trump’s campaign for president, made headlines last year when he grabbed at his crotch at a rally in Michigan.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Matthew Nussbaum contributed to this report.