Shocking audio obtained by The Maine Wire reveals a Maine public school teacher subjecting a student to a racially charged political rant and telling the middle schooler his conservative parents only support former President Donald Trump because they are uneducated.

Ann Cook, a resource room instructor for Gray-New Gloucester Middle School, was secretly captured on audio in April by a middle school student who was concerned with some of the conversations he had had with Cook, including conversations about her and other students’ sexuality.

Cook can be heard in the audio recording telling the student that his Trump-supporting parents are uneducated victims of propaganda before proceeding to make several questionable or outright false claims about Trump, President Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Main Wire reported.

“Your father and stepfather are just caught up in the propaganda,” Cook tells 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.”

Cook says that when she sees someone wearing a Trump MAGA hat, she thinks to herself, “that’s somebody who needs to be educated.”

She also tells the middle schooler that American law enforcement does not incarcerate drug offenders if they are white.

LISTEN:

It’s not immediately clear what prompted Cook’s bizarre political rant during the 8th grader’s study hall. It is also not clear whether other students were in the room at the time.

“[Trump] doesn’t pay taxes,” Cook said. “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,” she said. “And apparently he’s not that nice either.”

Asked whether Biden and Trump got college degrees, Cook tells the student Biden is very well educated but Trump went to a poor college.

“Biden is very well educated,” she said. “Trump has a degree from a college, a very very low-level college. And he was a very poor student.”

Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in 1968. Wharton is widely regarded as one of the best business schools in America.

Biden attended the University of Delaware and later received a law degree from Syracuse University. Biden, who has been caught several times plagiarizing both in his academic career and his political career, has claimed that he finished at the top of his class at Syracuse, but school records show he graduated the law school ranking 76th in a class of 85. Biden has also been caught embellishing his academic record and fabricating accomplishments on several occasions.

When the student says that his father told him gas prices have gone up because of the policies of President Biden, Cook tells the student his father is wrong, that gasoline prices have actually gone up because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and that “rich white men are afraid they’re not going to be making as much money.”

The student who took the audio also told his parents that Cook has had conversations about sexuality. According to the parent, the student said Cook told him about her relationships with other women and encouraged him to explore his sexuality, although there is no audio of that conversation. The student also alleged that Cook showed him school files containing private personal information about other students as part of her conversations concerning sexuality.

The parent of the student who took the recording asked not to be identified but is known to school district officials because he reported the content of the recording.

After the audio was disclosed to the district, the distract did not take any disciplinary action against Cook. She remains a resource room teacher for the middle school, according to the district’s website. The parent has never met Cook.

The Maine Wire reached out to Cook but did not respond to an email requesting an interview.