Teacher caught belittling Trump-supporting parents in Maine middle school

A shocking audio recording has revealed an inappropriate conversation between a teacher and her eighth-grade student, in which she went on a racially-charged political tirade and called the child's Trump-supporting parents uneducated.

The audio, which was secretly recorded by the student in April and obtained by the Maine Wire, features Maine's Gray-New Gloucester Middle School resource instructor Ann Cook ranting about "rich white men," former President Donald Trump, and praising President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

"Your father and stepfather are just caught up in the propaganda," Cook can be heard telling the middle schooler. "They believe the lies. And that's the whole point of lying is that people believe it just cause you say it."

The teacher continued on to state that anyone who wears a MAGA hat is "somebody who needs to be educated."

It is currently unclear what prompted this particular conversation or if other students were present in the classroom at the time. However, it apparently wasn't the first time that Cook had brought up subjects that are inappropriate to discuss with children.

The student who captured the audio had previously told his parents that Cook has had conversations with him regarding her sexuality and relationships with other women, and even going so far as to tell him to explore his own sexuality and showing him school files containing private personal information about other students.

"[Trump] doesn't pay taxes," Cook argued with the eighth-grader. "I pay taxes but he doesn't pay taxes because he cheats the system."

"He's a liar and a cheater and he's not that smart. And apparently he's not that nice either."

When asked about the two politicians' education, Cook told the student that Trump went to a "very very low-level college."

"Biden is very well educated," she said.

The Democratic president graduated from the University of Delaware and later obtained a law degree from Syracuse University. These are respectable schools, but during his campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, Biden touted several lies about his academic career.

"I went to law school on a full academic scholarship, the only one in my class who had a full academic scholarship," Biden said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. "The first year in law school, I decided I didn't want to be in law school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds of my class. And then decided I wanted to stay, went back to law school and, in fact, ended up in the top half of my class."

Biden also claimed that he "graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school."

According to Newsweek, the then-senator only received two undergraduate degrees. He also attended Syracuse only on a half-scholarship based on financial need. It was also revealed that Biden graduated ranked number 76 out of 85 students in his law school class.

 "Trump has a degree from a college, a very very low level college. And he was a very poor student," Cook went on to say.

The Republican is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, which is widely regarded as one of the best business schools in America, and has a remarkably low acceptance rate, according to Quad Education Group.

Cook then praised Vice President Harris, claiming that the former California Attorney General helped get "men of color" out of prison.

"Throughout her career, she's been guided by the words she spoke the first time she stood up in court, Kamala Harris, for the people," Cook told the child. "She specialized in prosecuting child sexual assault cases, putting pedophiles behind bars. Do you think that's a good thing to do? I do too."

"She created a groundbreaking program [instead of] putting men in jail – usually its men, usually it's men of color, because we don’t put white people in jail for these things – she came up with a program to help them earn a high school diploma and get a job rather than put them in jail," Cook added.

"Do you think that’s a good thing?," she again prompted. "I think that's a good thing."

In reality, Harris has been frequently criticized for harshly enforcing drug laws against predominantly minority communities.

In a 2019 interview on The Breakfast Club, Harris claimed that she supports cannabis legalization, and even said that she smoked marijuana in college. Despite this, the Democrat oversaw over 1,900 cannabis-related convictions as a prosecutor in San Francisco, according to Forbes.

When the student argued back, saying that his father told him gas prices have inflated due to the Biden administration's policies, Cook told him that they have actually gone up because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and that "rich white men are afraid they're not going to be making as much money."

Even though the audio was reported to Maine School Administrative District 15, no disciplinary action against Cook has been taken. She currently remains an employee at the middle school, according to the district’s website.

According to the students' parents, the audio was kept secret for several months because they feared the teacher and school district officials might retaliate against their child.

"I waited to share the recording because I didn’t want him to be targeted at school," said one parent to the Maine Wire.

According to emails shared by the parents to the outlet, the concerns and audio recording were communicated to the principal in September.

Principal Rick Riley-Benoit claimed in an email that he spoke with Cook after the parents complained, but did not list any further action taken.