Trump Admits To Coup Plus Missouri Candidate Jess Piper
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Trump's foolish admission that he tried to get Mike Pence to overturn the election.
Then, Missouri candidate Jess Piper talks about her journey from classroom teacher to running for office and why she's the most qualified person in the field.
To support the show and access additional content, including the weekly Weekender episode, become a patron at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
And if I win, we will treat those people from January 6th fairly.
We will treat them fairly.
And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons.
Because they are being treated so unfairly.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the McCraig Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton.
I'm here with Nick Halseman.
We got a full show today.
We got a bunch of stuff to get to.
We also are very, very lucky to have on Jess Piper, who is a teacher, a rural farmer and a Democratic candidate for Missouri House District 1.
I got to tell you, you're going to want to hear this interview because this is the type of person who should be running for office.
An absolute breath of fresh air.
So Jess Piper will join us later.
Before we begin, though, Nick, I don't even know what there is to talk about.
It's not like the former president of the United States of America came out and said that he wanted his former vice president to quote unquote overturn the election.
And it's not like he got in front of a crowd of people and, you know, dangled the possibility of pardoning the people who attempted to carry out a coup in his name on January 6th.
The O word.
They forgot.
They weren't supposed to say that one out loud, Jared.
I guess they say it enough amongst themselves that it just popped out there.
Because you know, he's been advocating he should have done the right thing this whole time, right?
The right thing.
He should have saved the election.
Yeah.
Didn't have courage to do the right thing.
And so now he's like, no, he didn't overturn the election.
It's nice that maybe they're coming to grips with something here.
Well, you know, we talk about this a lot.
It's very odd to headspace that these people have to exist within, right?
Because at times, they know that they're carrying something out, right?
They know that they're doing something wrong.
They know deep, deep down that something's happening.
But then there's other times that they talk themselves into it, right?
And all of a sudden, history's on their side.
They're heroes.
They're the good guys in the battle.
But when this comes out, and the language comes out, Imagine saying that out loud.
I wanted him to overturn the election.
Just saying it would make a normal person recoil in terror.
Why?
Haven't we all talked ourselves out of a coup in our past?
I mean, come on.
It seems, you know, like we've all had experience with that.
Didn't we all experiment with carrying out coups in college?
Yeah, at least once.
It doesn't make you a coup person.
Yeah, you know, it makes you coup curious.
And in this entire situation, like, we talked about this a little bit before we got going, It's really interesting to see what's happening with Trump at this moment, right?
And, you know, we've talked about it over and over and over again, that Donald Trump is a symptom, he's not the disease.
But in order to understand what's happening with the Republican Party right now, what's happening with its future, where all this radicalization is going, where the next couple of elections are going, you have to focus on this guy.
Because he is the embodiment.
He is the figurehead of a really dangerous movement.
And him coming out and saying this stuff and being so overt about it, I think is pretty telling, don't you?
I think that this Gestures towards something that is happening right now.
And what it is, is not completely clear.
But I think the shape of it is starting to manifest a little bit.
Well, people are musing that, you know, he's feeling the pressure of these lawsuits now that can really start to, you know, threaten the notion of him going to prison.
Now, we can't ignore the fact that he basically was calling for anything that might happen to him legally.
In the course of a democracy with laws that are done legally Anything that might happen to him in a legal sense, he is basically called for We say riots basically, right?
That's what he wants to have happen People will get out in the streets with some pipes and whatever and do some damage If he goes away Yeah, and Who amongst us has not run for the President of the United States of America To try and avoid legal ramifications, right?
And it's so sad that that's where we're at.
It was a job that he didn't want in the first place, he didn't enjoy having, and now it's like the last refuge that he could possibly have, right?
He's an absolute cornered rat at this point.
And you're right, he's getting out in front of people, and he's more or less saying, and do you remember There was this period of time, and it was when he was feeling the heat of getting defeated in 2020, he kept saying, they're coming after me to get to you.
Right?
After they get done with me, I'm the last thing standing between you and the evil people.
And they're going to come for your families, they're going to come for your guns, they're going to throw you in camps.
Has been putting this out there for a while.
And by the way, he deserves to be prosecuted.
He really does.
I mean, he is a criminal and he has been a career criminal for as long as he's been in the public eye.
He deserves to be prosecuted.
If he was to be prosecuted, if something were to come from any of this, there probably would be violence.
There probably would be people rioting.
There probably would be threats.
There probably would be chaos.
And he is stoking the flames of this while also trying to jumpstart a political career that, I don't know how else to say this, he's got the loser stink on him.
You know what, he got beat.
He didn't just get beat, as a matter of fact, he got beat.
Like he lost by, what was it, 7 million votes?
Plus 70, or maybe it's 40.
I'm bad with the Electoral College because it shouldn't exist.
But he got beat like a drum.
Well, he kind of did, but remember, 70,000 votes in like three different states and he wins anyway.
So we can't quite, you know what I mean?
I want to feel that same way, but that was pointed out to me on Twitter like a week ago when I mentioned that same point.
And I was like, you know, my response was the gif of like, God damn it!
Because he was right.
No, they're not wrong, but he still he got drummed out of office.
He's trying to maintain control of the Republican Party, which for anybody keeping track, the midterms, there's so many things that are going to take place in the midterms.
And can we both agree real fast?
They're going to be batshit crazy.
Like it is.
It's going to be nuts because the Republican Party, as it stands, is going to have to compete with Trumpist candidates There's going to be Trump going after the Republican Party, trying to maintain control of it in the face of opposition that is growing and time is moving on.
It's going to be nuts, and he is facing the possibility of actual consequences for his actions for one of the first times in his life, really.
I mean, it is, it's going, the temperature is going to get very hot, is what I'll say.
It's going to get batshit crazy before it gets any better.
Well, the confusing thing to me is that, you know, on the issues, whatever, they get batshit crazy anyway when they're running in the primaries and whatnot.
But the issue that's going to be really problematic probably is going to be COVID and how everyone wants to be a denier of COVID.
They want to be a denier of mask mandates and all those different things that keep everyone safe.
And what it looks like possibly is that by March and April, either everyone will have gotten it.
And then or they've gotten the vaccine.
So there seems to be a notion that it comes summertime.
It will kind of be back to normal, which could actually be good for Biden.
Finally, where he can sort of tout everything is open.
This is like he's the mayor of Amity, New York.
Amity, you know, in Jaws.
Amity Island?
Amity Island?
Yeah.
Yeah, Amity Island.
Is there an island after the word Amity?
Maybe.
Or is it just Amity?
It might just be Amity.
Anyway, he's the mayor who can tell, like, hey, everything's open, it's July 4th, this is great, come on down, take a swim, don't worry about the sharks.
Yeah, but wait, time out, there's a shark still out there.
I mean, we're talking about Jaws.
Because I teach this movie all the time.
There's still a big, man-eating fish out there.
But we just caught the, what was it, a blue shark?
Whatever they found?
It was a tiger shark.
And listen, that's the frightening thing.
You're right, there is a possibility that this pandemic is over.
I mean, we don't know.
I mean, we really don't know.
Well, I mean, listen, it's not over.
It'll come back in the winter, whatever.
But you've got to hope that maybe before November, you know, it doesn't come back crazy.
But by the way, what do you think about that?
Does that help Biden more than anything else, heading right into the election?
Yeah, I mean, not being in a new world war.
I mean, that definitely helps for sure.
Oh, yeah.
So you think that Putin's going to time this thing?
Oh, who?
Oh, I have no idea what's going to happen there.
But I will tell you, bringing it back to Trump, it's kind of funny because in that case, you're actually talking about, like, let's just say we have a rematch right now of Joe Biden versus Donald Trump.
You actually have two candidates that are in favor of people getting vaccinated.
And that has not gone well for Donald John Trump.
That has been a rough time.
And you'll notice, by the way, if you looked at the rally, Didn't really talk about that very much.
It's almost like Trump got tired of people booing him mercilessly every time that he brought up the vaccine and telling them to get boosted and get safe.
He feels pressure.
from the vaccine thing.
He feels pressure from the Republican Party right now, because you better believe the Republican Party does not want Donald Trump to keep having control over the party.
National conservatism, which is growing and mutating and getting weirder by the day, they never liked Trump to begin with.
They saw him as a useful weapon, and now they want to take over where he left off.
He's increasingly becoming, like, sort of isolated on an island.
They want to wave at him, they want to point to him, they want to use him for fundraising and organizing and motivating.
They wish he would sit this out, because they've got their eyes on other candidates, other ideas, and there's a shark out there in them waters as well.
Well, by the way, Trump probably feels the same way.
He can fundraise, he can have these rallies with no consequences or no, you know, notion of having to go through a campaign.
But like you said before, he probably is kind of motivated to get back in the White House to protect himself for another four years from getting put in jail.
This is the state of affairs in the United States, where you have a candidate who was, while president, only running to stay out of prison.
And again, running again in that same way.
But I don't know.
I wouldn't be surprised if he pulls some weird, like, you know, bullshit thing where he's like, oh, I'm not going to run.
And he'll come up with some, you know, unbelievable, ridiculous excuse for something.
But I kind of felt like there was no way.
He's definitely running.
But now I'm starting to move toward the other way, where maybe he won't.
He'll just figure out a way to maximize profits off of it anyway.
Yeah, that's the problem here, is like, we've kind of touched on this before, but it's like, what a batshit thing the Donald Trump political phenomenon is.
He ran to make money off running for the presidency in order to increase his brand, to possibly start a new media venture, right?
That's exactly what he was doing all of it for.
He slipped fell into the presidency with the help of a lot of insidious malevolent actors and disgusting traits in the American Body politic he ends up as president has no interest whatsoever in being president other than people having to stand up and him eating hamburgers with you know college athletes and
And then, now, he probably is really enjoying his life as much as Donald Trump can enjoy anything because he has a black hole within him that can't be filled with any amount of matter because he is completely wounded and destroyed.
Probably doesn't actually want to run for president except for the attention that he would get, but now he kind of needs to so he doesn't end up in some sort of a white-collar jail somewhere.
What a uniquely 21st century American story this is, right?
Well, by the way, you mentioned he doesn't want to talk about COVID.
Well, you know, stand-up comics don't want to usually talk about things they know they're gonna get booed when they're performing.
So, you know, he's following that rule there where he doesn't want to make sure he Keeps the crowd interested.
But I think he's also, the attendance is not what it used to be either.
There is a bit of a fatigue there.
But again, what the Republican Party didn't anticipate, because they're like, yeah, let's just, we'll just suck off the teat of what he created.
But like, they need every one of those Trump supporters, every one of them.
to maintain the little bit of, you know, advantage they have in the electorate in the way that things are mapped out with these ridiculous congressional districts.
So they can't afford anything less than, you know, dear leader and complete and utter devotion toward him, at least publicly.
And to remind everybody, when I was going to these Trump rallies, like 50 percent of them were fascistic authoritarianism, like just the most frightening shit you could ever imagine.
The other 50% We're boring as hell.
Donald Trump is just an absolute train wreck of a candidate who just talks about literally everything that comes into his mind.
He just goes on weird, rambling talks about how much money he is, how respected he is, all this stuff.
If something's in the news that day about a celebrity couple getting a divorce, he'll talk about that for 25 minutes to the point where people just get up.
They just get up and they leave.
But guess what?
2016, 2020, it was the only show in town.
It was the only person who would do that.
Since then, the Republican Party, and we talked about this, I want to say we talked about this in one of our first five shows, they looked at Donald Trump and they said, that's really useful.
Let's reverse engineer that.
What can we take from this?
How do we use it?
Now, all of a sudden, you have a new crop of people who speak pure Trump, right?
And they're willing to talk about literally anything.
Like, you know, do you want to talk about Jewish space lasers?
Absolutely.
We'll do that.
Ron DeSantis has more or less just absolutely butchered everybody in Florida at this point.
And he's now, I mean, Donald Trump is looking in his rearview mirror and there's, you know, Ron DeSantis's dumb head of hair ready to pass him, you know, to take the lead.
This thing, it's going to get very strange because I don't know If Donald Trump's chosen candidates, maybe they can win their primaries.
I don't know if they can win elections.
You know what I mean?
Because they have the stink of Trump on them.
They're really disliked.
They're really, they're batshit insane.
So who even knows where the balance of power is going to be after 2022?
I mean, it's almost impossible to predict at this point.
I think if DeSantis was smart, he'd become the vice presidential candidate underneath Trump, knowing that he'll probably be able to run a lot of it.
Because you remember when they were offering the vice presidential thing in 2016, right?
And they're like... They offered everything.
Everything.
And I think it was Kasich was like, well, what is the president going to do?
And that's all the things a president is supposed to be doing.
For people who have forgotten this, let's refresh memories.
When they met with John Kasich, And listen, Kasich is not a serious person at all.
You know what?
Let's not slander Kasich.
He's not... I will slander John Kasich all day, Nick Haussmann.
I will.
This is my show as well.
I will slander John Kasich.
John Kasich, he came out and he was like, I had a weird meeting discussing the VP position.
And one of Trump's representatives was like, picture it.
You're vice president.
Tell you what, you handle All foreign affairs.
And Kasich's like, oh, wow, that's incredible.
And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on.
We're not done.
You would also handle all domestic affairs.
At which point John Kasich, in his all shucks Midwestern way, says, what would the president do?
And they'd be like, he'd be winning.
Yep.
And that's, I mean, you're exactly right.
DeSantis would make a perfect VP for Trump.
But I got to tell you, the Trump Act is old.
It's only getting older with every single passing day.
The Republican Party recognizes what he was, what he means.
They want to get beyond him.
It sounds nice.
I hope that's true.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
It's not good.
It's bad.
They want to take it and do terrible things with it.
It's not good.
Right.
I mean, listen, Trump is now laying out the whole framework or whoever Trump's minions are about how to take over the elections.
And just the fact that he doesn't have to do any of the hard work, any of the smart stuff to get these local election boards taken control of.
He just needs to continue to spout These ridiculous lies about the election process, that that is the biggest value to the Republican Party right now, right, is that he can continue to erode any kind of faith and trust in the system itself.
And that's what they need.
That's right.
That's what the Republicans have always needed.
The cynicism that's wrapped up in the electorate that will all politicians lie, which then allows them to lie worse, I suppose, and allows them to be even more corrupt than they ever were.
And it's what's It's what's made the playing field so one level that Democrats are completely ineffective in their responses to these things.
It's because it's tilted almost 90 degrees.
There's nothing level about it anyway now, which is sort of why you'd think, OK, maybe Democrats would then fight back in equally dirty ways.
That doesn't seem like a great solution either.
And I don't know if that would work anyway, now that they're late to the party.
Yeah, it would be bad.
It'd be real bad.
And what Donald Trump gave the Republican Party was something that Fox News could only take stabs at.
Like, do you remember... I don't know how much of a Fox News viewing sicko you are, if you're like me.
Like, I used to watch pre-Trump where they'd be like, and today Hank Williams Jr., Bo Cephas is coming on to talk about the regular man, right?
Or they'd get Oh man, John Rich from Big and Rich.
You know what I mean?
Constant cowboy wannabes, like anybody that the liberal media had shit on that week, they would have them come on.
Fox News was constantly trying to figure out how to tap into the pulse of what you would call middle America, right?
A grieved white middle America.
Donald Trump More than anybody else understands that aggrievement and that anger.
This is the reason why he was able to take off the way that he was, is he was able to tap into the worst instincts.
Their anger, their racism, their sexism, their xenophobia.
And he was able to sort of figure that out and bring that into the body politic, exactly what you just said, which is he ended up in certain ways being able to go left of people, right of people, over people, around.
He basically changed the entire political paradigm of the country, and he played on all of these things that were in place that he just intuitively understood.
Yeah.
Because, again, he's a broken, angry, aggrieved white man.
Yep.
I think what that meant was it got a lot of people out to vote who never would have been part of the process before.
Exactly.
And that was what awoken the Republican.
Remember, the Republican Party was dead.
Hillary was going to win.
And basically, the Republican Party was going to dissolve.
They didn't have any path towards winning very many other elections.
And imagine that that would have continued from 2016 on.
It really would have been probably insurmountable for them to come back into any kind of meaningful power.
Nick, if you remember, after 2012, the plan in the Republican Party was that they had to move away from white supremacy and white terror.
They needed to start accepting immigration, probably pushing candidates like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in order to start playing to, you know, certain demographics that are now being criminalized.
It was going to shift.
That doesn't mean that they would have gotten better.
They still would have been neoliberal, austerity, war-mongering assholes, and they still would have appealed to white supremacy and terror, but they at least would have tried to have grown the demographic.
Donald Trump showed, no, if you want to win an election right now, this is how you do it.
It's going to hurt you in the long run, and believe me, we'll go ahead and fix elections going forward, but we'll get it done right now.
So you're exactly right.
It forked in the road.
It took it in a completely different direction.
I would like to think it's a little bit like... You've seen Lethal Weapon, right?
Yes.
I can't wait to hear where this is going with Lethal Weapon.
Well, Boris Gudnov, who is the bad guy with the beautiful hair, is strung up around his neck with the chain link, whatever.
He's dead.
He is dead.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Wait, is that Lethal Weapon?
No, I'm sorry.
I'm mixing now Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, right?
Die Hard, Boris Gudinov.
But he also is killed.
He's dead.
He's hanging.
He's not.
He's lifeless.
And then at the very end, right, he suddenly grabs a gun and is about to shoot.
Or, you know what?
I'm committing.
You know what?
This would be a good movie.
Let's mash Die Hard and Lethal Weapon together.
Anyway, he's about to shoot him and he misses and they shoot him dead.
And the point being that that was the Republican Party.
They were dead on arrival, completely and utterly strangled, hanging from this thing.
This is the last death rattle, right?
The last shot of epinephrine into their heart.
They've come up and they're waving their hands like crazy.
And you have to imagine that Hopefully, this is it.
Like, it's going to then crash and burn very quickly, or not even quickly, whatever, as the country finally continues the progression that it has been on for all these years.
Remember, the country's been on a progressive mode.
The only thing that derails that kind of thing is the fucking Supreme Court.
Yeah, it can be bad.
that's the thing that can last for 50 years.
I need to do some more research.
I don't know if you've done this on the impact of the Supreme Court over generations of American history.
Yeah, it can be bad, right?
When we've had bad courts.
Yeah, for a long, long time, which is again, oh, and you know, we haven't even, I guess we did pull apart the Supreme Court thing from last week, but man, it's gotten worse.
Like this, this, all this whispering of what they're saying about how, how, you know, even Americans, they did some sort of poll that said Americans think that you should not use race and gender as a criteria for, for who you're going to pick for the Supreme Court.
And it just reeks of a black woman couldn't possibly be qualified.
Oh, it's repulsive.
Yeah, and I can't wait for them to strike down Affirmative Action either.
I mean, it's like we keep saying.
It's going to get really, really gnarly, is what's going to happen.
And I believe that's Lethal Weapon, by the way.
I'm just going to put a button on that.
I'm putting my money on that as being Lethal Weapon.
Well, Lethal Weapon is, yeah, it's raining and they're in front of his house.
Is that Lethal Weapon 2, though?
No, I believe that's 1.
Gosh darn it, my mind is addled, Jared.
So, real fast, before we get to Jess Piper, I wanted to dive into something really, really fast, because I found it pretty instructive.
There was an article, and this sort of plays into a lot of what we're talking about, kind of what's in the background, right, of all of this.
There's this article in the Washington Post.
It was called The Moral Calculations of a Billionaire.
What a subtitle here.
After the best year in history to be among the super rich, one of America's 745 billionaires wonders, what's enough, what's the answer?
This is a really good article written by a guy named Eli Saslow, who's a really damn good writer.
And I wanted to talk about this and get into it a little bit, go over a couple of parts of it, because actually I think what is touched on in this is incredibly instructive for what has happened, but also why things are the way that they are.
And here we have a guy ...named Leon Cooperman, who I assume that nobody listening to this show has ever heard of, right?
Unless you're in, like, weird financial worlds, you've not come across this name.
He's a pretty anonymous billionaire, right?
This starts off in Boca Raton, Florida, because of course it starts off in Boca Raton, Florida.
Well, that's where you're going to live after you retire, right?
So, I'm just going to read a little bit of the beginning, and then we'll jump around a little bit.
Boca Raton, Florida.
The stock market had been open for only 17 minutes when Leon Cooperman picked up the phone to check how much money he'd made.
He dialed a private line to his trading desk in New Jersey, just as he did a dozen times a day.
Decent start to the morning, he asked.
Oh yeah, the market's shaky, but you're up.
Give me numbers.
Looks like six, seven million.
He hung up and watched a stock graph on his computer screen as it rose from one minute to the next, charting another good day to be a billionaire in America.
Outside the office, he could see his wife leaving to play in her weekly bridge game and a group of golfers strolling past on the private course.
He'd chosen to live in Florida for at least 183 days each year, in part to benefit from the state's low tax rate for residents.
Isn't that how you choose where you live, Nick, based on where tax rates are?
You know where I live, right?
Wait, are you talking about the communist state of California?
The People's Communist State of California?
Yeah, no one mentioned that when I got here, you know, 20-some years ago, but yeah, no, it's not a good place if you want to not pay taxes.
Wait, you don't jump on your private jet and go down to Florida for 183 days a year to take advantage of the taxes?
I just go there for lunch.
That's it, I just need, you know.
Yeah, it's really rough, man.
It's tough living that way.
It's real tough and it's even tougher when it's revealed that he had made 2.5 billion dollars and since 1975 he'd been making more than his family could spend.
And he says, I don't want to say it's all play money at this point, but what else could I possibly spend it on?
His wife's walk-in closet was already bigger than the South Bronx apartment where he'd grown up.
Their Florida home had a custom-built infinity pool, and in five years, he'd never once gone for a swim.
By the end of the day, by the way, he had made $10 million.
Doing nothing, by the way.
Absolutely doing nothing, except for circulating money within the system.
So we'll get into what this is all about, but what's your initial take on this, before we dive into the nitty and the gritty?
Well, here's the thing, you know, I'm sympathetic to this guy and we'll find out more why because he, you know, all the things he's done with that money that he's accumulated.
But and I get it like, you know, here's the thing that really stuck in my mind that I wrote it down because it was one of the quotes a little bit later where he said, the promise of a life in America was that each generation would surpass the one before.
So, his parents had come here as immigrants.
They were a plumber and, you know, had no money or, you know, nothing to their name.
And he built this thing.
That was the whole thing.
That's unsustainable, by the way.
Generation upon generation upon generation.
At one point, you know, you're not going to be able to surpass.
Like, there's no way this kid's, this guy's kids are going to surpass him, right?
You're not going to make another billion, five billion dollars or whatever.
They're not going to do it.
So anyways, but I'm sympathetic because he did, he was born at a time where that was the American dream.
I'm going to go, I'm going to get into business.
I'm going to make my money, make more money for me.
And there should be nothing wrong with that in this society, in this capitalistic society.
But we should be rewarded for all the work.
And he goes on and on about how hard he had to work and what he sacrificed in his social life to get there.
He did.
And by the way, there is something that's happening in this, which is What I would refer to as a sort of a malaise, something we've talked about before, which is people searching for meaning behind why they're doing what they do, right?
And I do enjoy that within this, he talks very, very much about how hard he works and how he built himself up.
I love, though, that it does include the fact that he received an inheritance of over $100,000, which at the time was probably about a quarter of a million dollars.
In all of this, And I'm glad we talked about Donald Trump to start this thing, because I'm sure you've read these articles that are just like, if Donald Trump simply would have just put his money into an investment, he would have so much more money now than he had already.
And what's being exposed in this article is that we have a system where if you have money, and if you do have privilege, the market's just going to increase it.
Just put it in.
Just put it in and it's going to increase as long as you're not stupid with it.
And as long as you maybe you give it to somebody.
I mean, he worked for Goldman Sachs for a while.
He knows what he's doing.
He has connections.
It's going to grow and grow and grow.
What we're finding with Leon Cooperman is that he gained entry into a system that is more or less like cold fusion.
It's just repeating itself and it's just growing.
In fact, he can't even help but make money at this point.
It's just growing and multiplying and growing and multiplying because this is a system that is specifically tuned to take the people who are already wealthy and...
And make them exorbitantly wealthy.
It's not about talent.
It's not about any of that.
It's the way that the system is actually created.
And here he is.
He's sitting there on all that money.
And there's not a lot to do with it.
Well, here's the thing because it becomes generational and so his family will probably never want for anything ever again.
The Cooperman and probably that goes for the really distant extended family.
Unless obviously whoever is in control of it will decide I'm not giving any more money to the family.
But the point being that in the early 60s when he applies to go work for Goldman Sachs, you know, you can't tell me that like a person of color would have applied with the same credentials and gotten that job.
Like it just probably didn't even happen.
They might not have hired anybody of color.
What are you saying about the American system?
I am shocked.
Isn't there a CRT moment?
And now I'm brought to you by the Muckbake Podcast.
I will tell you though.
And here's the thing about this article, and to go along with exactly what you're saying, he has been plugged into a system of incredible wealth and privilege, right?
Ah, dear listener who might have read this article with their coffee this weekend, here is a section from it.
And we've got to talk about this, and I want to talk about what it means.
Him and his wife had given away $150 million to a hospital in New Jersey, $50 million to college scholarships to Newark high school students, $40 million to Columbia Business School, $40 million to Hunter College, 30 million to performing arts, 25 million to the Jewish Family Fund, 20 million to skilled nursing, 15 million to food banks, and on and on it went.
But no matter how much they gave away, their money continued to make more money even as wages for the middle class remained essentially flat.
In the past 50 years, the gap between poor families and the top 0.1% had increased more than tenfold.
Real fast, good for him for giving his money away, right?
But should he have that money to give away?
Yeah.
Because basically what has been created in this culture, and this goes back to the Gilded Age, all of these charitable givings, right?
They are rich people determining where money should go because they are, quote-unquote, better equipped to do it than the government, right?
This is the creation of Ronald Reagan, neoliberalism, hyper capitalism.
This is, quote-unquote, trickle-down economics.
These are things that he has chosen because he is the talented person who should choose where money goes, right?
That's the problem in the system is we look at this charitable giving and we see it as some sort of saintly act.
We see it as somehow or another atoning for all of the egregious wealth, but in fact it's just creating government structures that are non-elected, non-representative, and face no repercussions whatsoever outside of you and me picking up our pitchforks.
That's it.
You know, this reminds me of a thread I just read by a friend of ours.
You might know him.
Dan.
Danny.
Danny Crenshaw.
Oh, good old Dan.
Yeah.
Yeah, he did basically almost like a haiku.
I don't know.
What's a long extended poem, whatever?
It's like a poem.
It's poetry.
Like a sonnet.
Yeah.
And you know what?
It turns out when you get to the end, it's not his words.
He actually was quoting somebody else.
But you want to hear the first one?
Because I thought it would be interesting.
His first one, this was yesterday.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
These are all words to live by, right, Jared?
I mean, it's very important.
I hate this.
I hate this.
You cannot strengthen the wage.
Why do you bring this into my life, Nick?
- Why? - Because I'm helping you, Jared.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
I mean, this is all good stuff.
You know, you cannot help little men by tearing down strong men.
So, you know, listen, I'm sympathetic.
The guy figured out how to make money.
He made a lot of money and now he's making more money and he's giving a shit ton of it away.
I mean, listen, on an individual basis, yes.
But he's not at fault and he doesn't understand in this article why AOC and people like Elizabeth Warren are calling him out so much.
Because he actually has pledged to give almost all of his money away by the time he's dead.
Yeah, but he's still choosing where to take it.
Oh, okay.
So that's interesting.
That's an interesting take.
Yeah.
It's not his money.
It's the system's money that was created and wired to give it to him.
It's not like he earned it.
That's what we've been told.
- It's not his money, it's the system's money that was created and wired to give it to him.
- Okay. - It's not like he earned it.
That's what we've been told, is that in all of this, we try to pretend like there's some sort of a talent, or some sort of a supremacy, to borrow a word, that this guy has shown that he best understands the system that this guy has shown that he best understands the system because he's made all this No, you can't lose with that much money unless you're reckless and ridiculous.
And what you just brought up, I want to read this really quickly.
This is a little bit of an interesting take on all of this.
He said that he was talking about his granddaughter, who, by the way, is an ultra liberal socialist type in favor of wealth redistribution.
And he adores her.
And he adores her.
Of course he does.
He probably is like, oh, that's very sweet.
He'd written to Senator Warren, Elizabeth Warren, about her soak the rich positions and to President Barack Obama about villainizing success.
By the way, quick quote from Barack Obama during the 2008 financial crisis in my new book.
"To avoid future meltdowns, it would take a reconsideration of how the economy functioned.
But at the same time, Barack Obama, quote unquote, the rest of us can't afford to demonize every investor or entrepreneur who seeks to make a profit." Barack Obama didn't vilify people making success.
He continued on the capitalist system as it was.
He saved it.
It says here that Cooperman, he was a registered independent and he voted for Joe Biden in the last election because he considered President Donald Trump a would-be dictator whose comportment in office was beyond disgraceful.
Well done!
Good for you!
Wonderful!
You're still part of the system that created him, but Cooperman believed most of all in the basic tenets of capitalism.
He'd earned his money, and therefore it was his to spend or give away.
He sent in a quarterly check for ten million dollars.
Ten million dollars, Nick!
He gave $15 million to quote-unquote skilled nurses.
God, I mean, he gave $30 million to a college with a huge endowment.
How nice of him to write that $10 million check to the government.
Weird how he spent all of his other money on the things that he cared about so it would keep you and me from having representation, but that's neither here nor there.
He paid an effective tax rate of 34%.
He told politicians in his letters he was willing to pay more, but he believed the highest effective tax rate should be no more than 50%.
To react to what you just said, this is not his fault.
It's not.
He's guilty of participating in an exploitive, awful system.
This isn't his fault.
This is the system behind him.
It's the way that this is set up to prioritize people like him having the money and deciding where it goes.
Tax-free in order to earn himself public relations credit.
That's what this is all about.
One quick point is they compared him to his brother who had a very modest living but also had a lot, potentially, more good close friends.
He didn't alienate people.
He didn't work so hard where he didn't have a lot of connections like that.
And I kind of get the sense that this other guy doesn't have that as much because he worked so hard.
Although at this point, why he's not having a party every fucking day over at his house, I have no idea.
But that's why you and me aren't the ones at our desk from 7 in the morning until midnight.
Like, I'll do that if I need to turn a book in.
I don't know if you saw this in the article.
It said he takes one day off a year and that's the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Yeah.
That's miserable.
Yeah.
But the lead that I think you buried really quickly, even though you read it, was he pays 34% in taxes.
Now, I pay more than that when you add it all together, even though I fund my 401k and I protect myself as much as I can from the tax burden.
That is really the criminal thing, because you have to remember, when you make that much money and you go from 34% to just like, even pretend like 38% on the 700, how many?
700 some billionaires we have.
Do you know how much money that is when you add a couple of percentage points to what their tax burden could be?
That's the difference.
And that's why he's like, yeah, go up to 50.
That's all you would need.
In theory, you could eliminate, I don't want to say you can eliminate homelessness, but you could eliminate a lot of poverty by raising that to 50% across the board and all those billionaires.
You could eliminate it.
It's billions of dollars probably by that point.
Well, and what I hate is that all of these billionaires, like Oh, what's his name?
Bill Gates, right?
Bill Gates announces he's going to give away, I don't know what he said, like 70, 80 percent, like maybe even 90 percent of all of his wealth, right?
He's going to give it away.
First of all, still insanely rich.
Like, disgustingly rich, right?
On top of that, he's giving it to his own foundation so that he can avoid taxes and he can decide what to do with it.
He picks the projects.
He figures out what places are going to get money.
In a way, it's almost like what government's supposed to do.
Where government is supposed to, as a democratic representative of the people, it's supposed to decide where the money goes.
This is why we can't pass bills.
This is why we can't update infrastructure.
This is why we can't have public works.
Because we got Leon Coopermans of the world out there deciding, nah, let's move it over there.
Let's move it over there.
Alright, we're going to talk to somebody who, I'll tell you what, I wouldn't mind being in the halls of power deciding where money goes and going after people like that.
And that is Jess Piper, a teacher, a rural farmer, and a Democratic candidate for Missouri House District 1.
Believe me, everyone, you're going to want to stick around for a second.
Here's Jess Piper.
Hey, everybody.
Listen, I've been looking forward to this for a little while, and I just want to let you know that you have a little bit of a treat coming your way.
We have with us Jess Piper, who is a teacher, farmer, public school advocate, and a Democratic candidate for Missouri House District 1.
I've become a really, really big fan of hers.
Her style, the way she is handling her race, And, you know, as we talk about on the Montclair podcast, we want people to take control of their own political destinies.
We want people to get out there and fight the good fight and speak their minds and take back democratic power.
And I have to tell you, Jess Piper, first of all, thank you for joining us.
And second of all, I think that you are showing people how this thing should be done.
Can you talk about why you're in this race, why you're doing this, and what it is that you're trying to do here?
Exactly.
And I'm so happy to be here.
Thank you, guys.
Like you said, my name is Jess Piper.
I'm from a tiny little town of 480 people.
I live right on the border of Missouri and Iowa, and I'm running for a House District seat in District 1.
I'm a veteran educator.
I taught American Lit and middle school, and so nothing hurts me.
Let me just say that up front.
I'm completely dead inside from my middle school experience.
Um, you know, we've got a lot of problems going on in Missouri.
We've had a supermajority Republican supermajority for over a decade.
They've defunded our schools.
And so what I tried to do with my life is, you know, try to make things better by, you know, teaching 100 kids every year.
And I finally realized that they are really, um, hindering us and what we can do.
And so I thought, just forget it.
I'll, I'll run for office.
It's never something that I intended to do or necessarily wanted to do, but here I am.
What does the race look like for you and how strong is the competition to get the to run for the seat?
So it's an open seat, which is why I thought this is a great time to do this.
So far, there are three Republicans who put their hat in for the GOP nomination.
I don't think I'll have a primary.
But, you know, some pretty strong candidates.
One that is, he just graduated with my son, a very young one.
And so I think we'll probably see another couple come out of the woodwork ready for this seat.
So Jess, one of the reasons that I found you in the first place is a near and dear friend of mine pointed you out to me.
Basically said this is what we need that we need candidates who not only care and are involved in the community But quite frankly Aren't just old tired and true politicians My friend was very very impressed by the way that you handle yourself and I have become as well I was hoping you could talk a little bit about
Your style in handling this, because it is both organic and real, and it is such a breath of fresh air.
I was hoping you could talk about how you're approaching this whole mess of the political world at this moment.
Yeah, well, you're right.
I mean, I don't necessarily know politics, but I understand people.
And also, I've been poor most of my life.
I ended up getting a graduate degree so I could teach, but before that, I mean, I was born into poverty.
You know, people would put groceries in our car.
That's how poor we were.
And I just learned, like my dad always told me, you know, don't take the first shot, but you know, don't back down in a fight.
And that's just how I feel.
I feel like a lot of Democrats out here where I am, but probably across the nation, are used to being defensive or taking on defensive positions.
And that's just not my style.
I always play to win.
And in the end, I think that people need to be represented by folks who will stand up and fight for them.
I just got an endorsement today from UAW 249 down in Kansas City.
And his big thing was, and he's the same way, He's like, you fight the good fight and you don't back down.
And I don't care if it's a Democrat who has something crappy to say.
I'll stand up for people every day of the week.
So I'm very progressive.
I fall under the Democratic umbrella, but I'm a fighter.
I'm curious, are you from Missouri or Missouri?
Well, they would call it Missouri because I'm definitely out state.
You know that 480 people.
So yeah, we raise hogs and chickens and beef out here.
So yeah, I'm curious.
I'm sorry, I'm curious.
Is there a geographical significance or difference between like Northern Missouri and Southern Missouri?
Is it?
Can you feel that when you're there?
Yeah, so I'm originally from Arkansas.
So yeah, there's definite a definite disconnect and it could be.
It's like minor things like Like in schools in Southern Missouri, they still use corporal punishment and up in northern Missouri they don't.
I know that's crazy, but 19 states across the nation actually let schools hit kids, which is insane.
But so yeah, there's definite differences, but outstate is outstate, and I don't know if you know much about Missouri, but it feels like our blue centers are trying to leave the state because one's in Kansas City and one is in Saint Louis, and they're like the furthest places you could go so.
Yeah, that's an accurate description of everything I understand, not just about Missouri, but also in most of these Midwestern states where, you know, they need people like you to come in and compete for these these posts.
And I was wondering if you could talk about what it was that was the moment that made you decide to do this, because I've talked about on the podcast before.
I flirted with running for Congress because I come from an impoverished background, much like you.
I think it's time that people who have, quite frankly, been betrayed by not just the Republican Party, but also Democratic members who are wealthy and have no interest in actually helping people.
Joe Manchin could not be reached for comment.
In the midst of all of this, I was like, I got to get in this fight.
And I was almost immediately revolted by the sort of party mechanics of it, the lobbyists who came up out of the groundwork.
And I got to tell you, I feel bad about that, that I didn't go through with it.
But I feel that drive.
And I was wondering if you could talk about the drive that led you to do this.
What's the story here?
How did you end up in this position?
Well, I mean, I was an American literature teacher, but my passion was always history.
And so I really started getting involved with teaching African American history through American Lit and also slavery through American Lit.
And so you can tell over the last couple years I'm a great target for what's going on right now in schools.
And so with COVID, with masking, with CRT, it's just this big ball of nasty that's all meant to defund public education.
They just keep switching it up, but it's all meant for the same thing.
I thought, who better to take on this fight?
And by the way, I mean, people will come at me and talk about, you know, systematic failures in schools.
Well, no shit.
I mean, like there's nobody better than a teacher to stand up and say, yeah, I know exactly what they are and we need to do that.
But taking money away from schools and giving it to charters or giving it to your friends that are running a private school, like that's not going to make schools better.
And, you know, we see a big push for privatization of schools.
They're calling it school choice.
Well, you know, I live in a town of 480 people.
My daughter has 16 kids in the entire fourth grade.
There's no choice here.
All you did was defund her school.
You know, you took away a textbook from her, but there's no choice.
And that's what most of Missouri is like.
There is no choice.
You're just defunding our schools.
And so I thought, because I understand schools, I understand funding.
And by the way, I've been to Jeff City where those lawmakers are trying to pass laws.
They don't know the first thing about teaching or classrooms or anything.
So someone needs to do something.
Well, I just want to follow up.
I'm so glad that you and I thought you nailed this because you have to position what's actually occurring.
This has nothing to do with critical race theory.
This has nothing to do with Marxist teachers in a classroom.
We're talking about a bunch of absolute capitalistic vultures who recognize that public education is on the ropes because they've defunded it for God knows how long at this point.
And there is not just billions, but possibly trillions to be made by privatizing public education.
This is a cash grab.
And they're using conspiracy theories and fear, exactly like you were talking about, to try and chisel their way in and destroy this.
100%.
And they're using that playbook from Virginia.
You know, Youngkin walked out with CRT being that, you know, final blow because those, you know, white suburban moms were like, oh, I don't know, this sounds kind of scary.
And they went with him.
And now they've got a playbook.
And I think that they're going to try to recreate it over and over again.
Absolutely.
Did you encounter, you know, the anti-CRT movement before just this recent wave when you were teaching about slavery?
No, nothing.
And that's the funny thing.
I mean, if you were going to come after a teacher, I would be prime because this is what I do.
I mean, I relate a lot of things to systemic racism in our country.
I was basically teaching the history of the country using the words of the founders.
But how are you going to come after me when I'm using Thomas Jefferson's words?
or when I'm using articles of secession.
Like, how are you gonna come after me?
Those are primary sources.
And so the only time I ever had a pushback was using a poem by Clint Smith, whom I love.
And it was talking about all of the people who have been brutally shot and killed in the country by police officers.
And I had a police officer say, you know, why did you use this poem?
I told him nothing.
So in all of my years, I've had one parent push back.
And so in this recent wave, it hasn't really come up for you then either.
Well, I'm not working this year.
I took this year off, but I I'm assuming that this year would have been much tougher for me than any year I've ever taught.
Well, and it is designed to create that feedback loop.
It's designed to create the panic, and then it's supposed to make your job worse.
It's supposed to make it untenable to the point where you either fold under, you don't teach what you need to teach, or you leave the profession altogether.
And you're exactly right when you said like they're gonna repeat this.
They have think tanks all over the country right now that are churning these things off.
And I gotta tell you where I come from, which I don't know if I've ever said this out loud, seems like it's actually bigger than your hometown.
Like they hate outsiders coming in and telling them what to do.
You know, they don't like that idea.
Matter of fact, that's the whole now Republican orthodoxy.
But in truth, it's outsiders coming in to take over communities.
It's coming in to take your school, destroy it, and then make other people go elsewhere so billionaires can get even more rich.
And that's what a lot of this comes down to.
And it's taking the Republican platform because they're for local control, right?
No you're not.
You have eight legislators that are trying to create curriculum for my school in a town of 480 people.
That's hands off.
I elected a school board to take care of my curriculum.
You mind your own business in Jeff City, you know?
They're trying to, like we have right now, Eric Schmidt is our AG and he's suing all of these schools for their mask mandates.
One, his kids go to a private school and they're masked.
Two, he's not suing the school that his wife is a teacher at, so it's just, you know, picking shoes.
And three, that's all for political gain.
They're not looking at COVID, David.
They're looking at poll data, and they're saying this poll's high.
We'll kill kids in the process, but you know what?
This poll's really high for you to beat Eric Greitens, you know, because he tied up his girlfriend, you know, to exercise equipment in the basement.
So it's that he, Eric Schmidt, is trying to out-MAGA Eric Greitens, and it cannot happen.
In the process, he's harming Our kids, our schools are closing.
There are 60 schools across the state that can't open because COVID is rampant and it's because they won't allow our kids to mask.
It's pure insanity and it's all for political gain.
And that's what people really react to when you show them, hey, you may not like to mask.
Who likes to mask?
I don't like to mask either.
I mean, I do it because that's my civic duty and I don't want anyone to get sick.
I don't love to mask.
But when you take it away from schools for political gain, people get mad about that.
That's not okay.
I'm kind of curious, did you feel like your political views and feelings about issues evolved due to actually being a teacher in the classroom?
Or were you progressive, you know, from the beginning growing up?
I was born and raised a conservative.
I was evangelical.
I didn't wear pants or makeup.
I wore dresses.
I didn't go around naked.
I was very conservative.
It's through college, through reading, and then really becoming involved in African American studies.
Because I didn't know what I didn't know.
I didn't know the things that nobody taught me.
And that's what I tried to impress in my kids.
By the way, most of my kids were 90, it's 98% white.
So when people say, oh, this makes kids, white kids feel, you know, embarrassed.
Are you kidding me?
I've never had a kid say they were embarrassed or ashamed.
They're like, my God, I didn't know this.
We should do something about it.
Which is why people don't want them to know.
Because even kids, That are getting off a tractor and coming to school and scraping their boots off before they walk into the classroom are appalled when they learn how other people are treated.
And it's just, it's something that they need to know.
No one's embarrassed.
It's not your fault.
It's like climate change.
I don't, you know, teachers don't teach climate change and make someone feel ashamed of it.
It's not your fault, but you got to take care of it.
The same thing with systemic racism.
It's not your fault, kids, but it's on your plate.
You got to take care of it.
Yeah, the damnedest thing about all of that is the kids they're supposedly being made to feel bad about it.
It was rich white folks in the South.
It was an aristocratic class.
It wasn't the kids getting off the tractor, right?
It's a complete twisting around of power and history that you use to, to weaponize all of this.
And I, and I gotta tell you, your ability to sort of boil these things down, I, I have to imagine this is kind of surprising for a lot of potential voters and people who have dealt with just the worst talking points and rhetoric that has just been peddled over and I have to imagine this is kind of surprising for a lot of potential Who have dealt with just the worst talking points and rhetoric that has just been peddled over and over and over again.
Blue and red, Democrat and Republican.
Have you noticed that these conversations are starting to actually pick up speed as opposed to like these old trite platitudes?
They are and that's why you probably found me online and why a lot of people do too because the GOP put something out and I'm like no.
That's not right.
And I push back.
And also because I'm a teacher, I help other people find the language they need.
So when I see somebody that says something, calls me a Marxist or whatever, and says something about CRT, I just skip the whole Marxist point.
But then I teach people how to attack this message.
Define CRT.
Where is it taught in Missouri?
Can I see a lesson plan or graded work about CRT?
What is a Marxist?
And so I just teach people how to attack these crazy, insane Talking points that mean nothing to anybody out here.
If we're not familiar with what Missouri politics are right now, what is the biggest issue you're going to have to deal with while you're running for this office?
Personally, I think it's health care.
But what you see the GOP do, and obviously education, what you see the GOP doing is churning out abortion bans, guns everywhere.
By the way, did you know we have something called the Second Amendment Preservation Where we nullified all federal gun laws.
And so talk about defunding the police.
The GOP will charge any officer $50,000 for working with a federal agent on a gun crime.
That sounds like defunding the police to me, but you know, what do I know?
So they're making these big bills about culture wars.
And nothing to help anybody in my neighborhood.
There's nothing being done about rural hospitals closing and the defunding of schools.
Roads.
I don't even have paved roads in my town.
It's chip and seal.
Like, these are things that people need while they're nullifying gun laws.
Well, and while they're doing that, and while they're pushing back culture war stuff, all it's doing is making sure that people vote against them.
And that they've sure that they don't have health care, they don't have a decent education, they don't have any of this stuff.
What you're actually doing is telling people, hey, you've been absolutely led astray in this situation, right?
Exactly.
And we can also, I mean, we need to own up for our faults, too.
The Democrats have absolutely abandoned my part of the world.
I have never once had anyone knock on my door, not a Republican either, but not a Democrat.
And so when people say that we have failed out here, there's no message.
And I haven't had a Democrat to vote for in almost four years.
Every one of my representatives from my sheriff to my U.S.
Senator is a Republican.
And the whole reason is I didn't have a chance to vote for a Democrat.
Describe the shape of the district you're running for District 1 and what that encapsulates.
What part of Missouri is under that jurisdiction?
So we're at the very northwest corner and we have four counties.
We just did redistricting.
So I lost a county and gained another because we are one of the smallest districts in the state.
The good thing is we picked up a district that I was actually a teacher in, so I know some people over there.
It's very, very red.
But again, when we look at a map, it's red because who else are you going to vote for?
And also, people aren't talking to people who are registered and haven't voted.
I know a lot of people, folks will say to me, well, how are you going to flip a Trump voter?
I'm not.
I can't, but there's 10,000 people that are registered that didn't vote, and those are the people I'm going to go talk to, and that's more than the number I need to win.
So, that's my strategy, is bringing out the people who are apathetic, who haven't voted in a while because they just felt like nothing matters, you know, who cares if I vote or not.
You know, Jess, you just brought up something that I wanted to touch on before we run out of time here.
You strike me as the type of politician and person who the Democratic Party should be running and that they used to run and that they abandoned, to be quite frank.
It's one of the reasons why I resigned from the Democratic Party, because in a lot of ways, It moved towards corporations, it moved towards this, you know, professional managerial class, and it forgot people from places where we're from.
This feels amazing to me, but I would love to hear what you think that the Democratic Party needs to rediscover what it used to be.
What it needs to re-find its way, because I think that that betrayal, to be honest, One of the worst things that has happened in modern American history, and I'm glad that you're in this fight.
Yeah, well, my great grandparents were FDR Democrats.
They were farmers.
They knew what good government could do, and we've gotten away from that.
And you're 100% right in people being, you know, suspicious of politicians that are taking money from all over the place.
Like, I got the UAW, you know, endorsement today.
I'm not taking money from Ford.
You know, that's that's corporate.
That's against the the very people that I'm fighting for.
And so but you see that.
And, you know, you see people that are trading stocks that are that have inside information.
It just feels so freaking corrupt and nothing changes here.
And so I think the Democrats need to reach out, find progressive candidates.
And we have this.
There was a big infight within the Missouri party with me using the word progressive.
They want me to be moderate.
What's moderate going to change?
Republican light isn't going to do anything different than what we've got going right here.
We need big, big changes in this state.
We need people to run.
In 2020, there were 50 seats that were uncontested.
Nobody was on the ballot except a Republican.
It all went to the Republicans.
But there's no money.
We don't get any money from the state party.
There's little direction.
It's just really hard.
I'm not trying to bang on them or anything, but It's hard, you know?
And I already have one, I have one thing going for me.
I speak up, I'm not scared, and I have a big social media presence.
And this allows me to raise my own money, but it's money from regular folks.
I get three, I'm not kidding you, I get a donation from a woman every single month for $3.
God bless her.
That's what I'm working with right now, are these really small donations from everyday folks who are like, oh my God, please do something.
Oftentimes I get frustrated with the notion that money tends to equate winning a race, right?
The more money you raise, the more you're going to win.
And I wish we wouldn't live in that situation, but obviously this is where we are.
So you're raising money right now, and where are you putting that money?
How is that going to go to help you to secure the seat?
Boots on the ground!
It's going to get people here to knocking doors and to talking to people because they've never, like I said, I've never had my door knocked in all of these years.
And I'm one person.
And when you're in a district like mine, it's all rule.
And so it's lots of traveling, lots of driving, lots of knocking on doors.
So everything we've spent, and this is why I tell people, if you send me money, I'm not making a commercial on it.
I'm investing in data that the next person can use too.
There was no data here.
No one knew any of the voters.
We don't have their phone numbers.
We don't know where they live.
Everything is wrong.
There's something called VAN I'm sure you guys are familiar with.
It's all wrong because no one has taken the data in a couple decades.
And so what we're doing is trying to create infrastructure that would help the next person.
And hopefully it's going to help me as well.
And I hate raising money, too.
We're supposed to do something called call time.
I would rather, I'm not kidding, put anything underneath my fingernails.
I don't want to call people and ask them for money.
It is awful, you know?
And so what I try to do is say, hey, you like me?
I'll fight for you.
If you want to send me a couple bucks, send me a couple bucks.
Jess Piper, you are just great.
Where can the good people find you?
They can find me at jessicapiperformissouri.com.
They can find me on Twitter, Jess Piper.
They can find me on TikTok.
Man, I love that app.
It's just Piper Mo on TikTok.
Just Google my name, you can find me.
Alright everybody, that was Jess Piper, again, a teacher, rural farmer, Democratic candidate from Missouri House District 1.
Nick, I'm impressed with her.
I'm just gonna be honest.
Like, this is the type of person, grassroots, regular person, who felt the calling to run for stuff, and communicates honestly, and isn't just a complete bullshit politician.
I was impressed.
Yeah, I think that the experience you have in a classroom at that even at that age is really important and really helpful to being part of the government.
So I think that's huge and and this makes me feel like I just believe that she is in earnest wants to help the country.
Yeah, and it's real coincidental that teachers understand this stuff, they're able to communicate with people, they're able to sort of give knowledge over, and that they're constantly under attack now.
It's almost like it's a plan to try and take teachers out and take over public education, right?
Almost.
I mean, we didn't even mention this fact that they're getting rid of To Kill a Mockingbird and Mouse in the educational curriculum now.
It's a we'll have to have a conversation coming up because I'm curious some of your thoughts on that, too.
But yes, it's a it's a complete and utter attack on the on how we raise our children, which is obviously the future of the country.
Yeah.
And I thought.
I think one of the things for anyone listening out there, and I know that there are members of the administration out there, and I know that there are members of the Democratic Party out there, there are politicians out there who listen to this show, listen to Jess Piper, listen to how she talks, listen to how she gets her message across, because it's authentic.
It's real.
It's an actual human being talking about things that they care about, things that they know, and talking to other people.
It's the kind of thing that needs to be done, and it's one of the reasons why we are having such a political problem in this country.
Because we have a bunch of very, very wealthy, privileged, affluent people who run for all of this stuff, and it keeps people like this from running for it.
For sure.
I mean, I like to think in some... Remember, my brain is addled, but I like to think that, you know, some of these really wealthy people would then be devoid of any kind of outside influence and they wouldn't be corrupt because they have money already.
But we've seen that that's not really the case for most of these people, unfortunately, even the people that we would probably want to agree with.
You know, we can't even get Nancy Pelosi this just to pretend to say, yeah, maybe we'll look at, you know, not letting congressmen, you know, trade stocks while they're in office.
Like she won't even like whisper that out loud.
It's insane.
There's a really, really telling quote from the patron saint of the working class, one Mr. Bruce Springsteen, which I think is incredibly instructive, which is, all men want to be rich, rich men want to be kings, and the king ain't satisfied until he owns everything.
It doesn't stop.
Because that, that's like this guy, real fast, Cooperman.
I think he's instructive too.
Look at, he can't stop, Nick.
He doesn't have to do this anymore.
He doesn't have to sit at his desk for, let me do the math, 17 hours a day?
Is that correct?
17 hours a day?
Sure.
Sitting at his desk, constantly checking on his money.
He doesn't have to do that.
He can go anywhere in the world.
He can buy pretty much anything in the world.
He can enjoy everything.
He says at one point, I could buy a Picasso, but it doesn't turn me on.
Why?
You know, what are you trying to fill?
What are you trying to replace?
It's like Donald Trump is a perfect example of this.
Man has everything that he could possibly ever want except for anything that he wants.
Like, they can't stop.
There's something compelling in those people.
I don't know what it is.
Yeah, I don't know either.
But you know what it is.
It's the way, you know, you're raised, you're taught.
You want to amass and you want to hold on and you want to get and have things.
But I gotta tell you, Cooperman is still an impressive person to me who has that mindset despite being that wealthy.
He could easily have been a Trumper and want to protect more of that wealth and vote that way.
He's willing to give away his money.
He's willing to pay more taxes.
We probably need more of those kind of billionaires.
Maybe we could get some things done too.
Oh, I would take 10 out of 10 in terms of billionaires.
I'll take a Leon Cooperman.
Absolutely, I will.
But I also don't think billionaires should exist.
That's the other thing.
You know what?
I'd be fine if Leon Cooperman had a couple hundred million dollars.
I think that would be just wonderful, and he could eat all the Costco lamb chops that he could get his hand on and take trips on his Schwinn bike.
That'd be great.
What's that?
Where does that money go?
Does he like, once he hits 250 million, like it just, it has to get zorched out of his account?
That's a great discussion for a future conversation.
I would say that you would have laws in place that would already keep that type of accumulation from getting out of control.
But I'm sorry.
I think having even $200 million is pretty obscene.
But if you have $200 million, I think you're OK.
I think you're all right.
By the way, I wonder if that would keep prices down because you don't have million billionaires spending so extravagantly.
Perhaps, you know, it makes it easier for everybody else.
Well, it'd certainly make the price of yachts go down.
I'll make sure of that, right?
And your personal jets.
I think that those prices would probably be okay.
You know what?
That's the change I want to see.
Personal jets and yachts.
That's the real victim of inflation.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right, everybody.
Thank you for listening.
We will be back on Friday with our Patreon Weekender episode.
To gain access to that and support the show, we are not Leon Cooperman.
We do not have billions of dollars.
We are an independent media venture that depends on your support.
Go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
You'll gain access to those bonus episodes, but also to the Muckrake community.
We have an amazing Discord, who has a book club, amazing discussions, hangouts, and again, we depend on that support.
That is patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
If you need us before that episode, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
