Air Force Master Sgt. Nick Kupper became a leader for troops fighting President Joe Biden’s military vaccine mandate behind the scenes when he refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine due to religious reasons.
That experience has galvanized Kupper, who is now retired, to run for office in Arizona’s 25th legislative district for an open seat in 2024.
“The majority of our lawmakers have not only failed us — you know, those in the military — but they failed the entire country, and they failed themselves,” Kupper told Breitbart News in a recent exclusive interview.
“One of the things I noticed is, honestly, just how spineless so many of our supposed leaders are, and we don’t need spineless people leading this country,” he said. “We now have a lot of weak people running it. There’s the saying, ‘Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.'”
“That’s what’s going on right now. We have a lot of a lot of weak people who are creating a lot of problems for the entire country, to the point where they literally could tear the whole thing down,” he added.
Kupper, 38, a husband and father of four, was just a couple of years from retirement from the military when Biden ordered that every service member take the COVID-19 vaccine or be kicked out of the military. On the line were his retirement pay and his family’s medical benefits, the latter of which was particularly important for his child with special needs, whom he and his wife adopted from Armenia.
Nick Kupper with his wife and children. (Courtesy Nick Kupper)
Kupper told Breitbart News he had filed for religious accommodation from the vaccine but was told by commanders he would be discharged anyway. He joined a lawsuit against the Department of Defense (DOD). After his religious accommodation request was denied and he faced discharge, he spoke out about his case on Tucker Carlson Tonight, which the Air Force reprimanded him for. He was on the verge of being kicked out when a court injunction stopped further discharges.
“It was definitely not an easy thing. If I hadn’t had God and my strong family support, I don’t know how I would have made it through it,” he said. “The pressure they put on people is the kind of thing that causes people to kill themselves, especially when they don’t have that strong support.”
“My biggest concern was losing my medical benefits for my daughter…She already had nothing when she was in Armenia, and I wanted to give her everything. But in the end, what I was able to demonstrate to myself and to my family was that no matter what, I was going to stand up for what was right even if it meant I lost everything,” he said.
“I don’t think many people in this life get the chance to truly see how strong their convictions really are. A lot of people have a lot of strong convictions, but how often are you truly tested to that level?” he said.
Kupper said he speaks to people every single day whom the mandate has harmed. One was a young airman who was kicked out but now owes his enlistment bonus back.
“They took his entire final paycheck, and then they told him, ‘You still owe more money.’ He said, ‘Well, I have no job; you just fired me. I have no money. You just took my entire final paycheck.’ And they said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll just send you to collections.'”
“So now he goes to collections. It’s an insult to injury, and even after he pays it off, it’s going to be sitting on his record for seven years. So the military is just kicking this guy when he’s down. It’s almost as if they’re asking him to try to kill himself,” he said. “And so it’s stories like that I hear.”
Kupper also said he talks to senior service members who took a stand and were kicked out before the injunction came down. “Now they’ve lost their entire retirement. [They] might live 40 years after retiring. They’ve just lost at least a million and a half dollars in retirement, not even counting any other medical benefits and everything,” he said.
Nick Kupper (Courtesy Nick Kupper)
But Kupper does not just take issue with the way national leaders handled the pandemic. He also wants to secure the U.S.-Mexico border — an issue that directly affects his border state of Arizona.
“My district [is] just a few miles from the border,” he said. “Yuma County now has spent $80,000 already, putting porta potties at the border because the illegal immigrants are coming in, and they’re urinating and defecating in the farm fields. And they already cost the local farmers $500,000 in crops last year alone,” he said.
“Yuma is America’s winter salad bowl. It’s like 80 or 90 percent of all of our leafy greens in the winter come from Yuma in the U.S. and Canada,” he said.
He said that migrants are often sold lies, believing they can come to the U.S. illegally and make a living.
“The Democrats like to pretend to be the party of compassion. They’re not compassionate. They’re harming people. Every single one of these lives is harmed by allowing them in here.”
He said abortion was another critical issue, and he would work to find alternative solutions for women.
“In Arizona alone in 2021, 15 percent of all pregnancies ended in abortion. That’s a pretty big number. It’s huge,” he said. “I think life is precious no matter what. But no one ever really talks about why women feel the need to do this. Where have we been as a society that’s changed? Because it wasn’t always like this. And we should be taking better care of women and not just their unborn children. We need to do both.”
He also wants to restore to Arizona the economic prosperity the U.S. had under former President Donald Trump.
“During Trump’s administration, it was pretty darn good. I think all of us were doing pretty well. And for whatever faults people say Trump has, he was good with the economy, and I wish we had that economy back,” he said.
But overall, he said the way the government handled the events of 2020 was a major factor in his decision to run.
“Watching the BLM riots and watching people just happily let our country be torn down, physically torn down and burnt, and all this race-baiting and everything else, all of that set me on this path for sure,” he said.
“And then I saw that our last bastion of hope, a wing of our government that’s supposed to be apolitical — the military — going so hard on these mandates,” he said. “All of that led me to say, ‘Hey, there’s got to be better than this. And if I’m not seeing better people to step up, then I need to be that person to step up.'”
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