Tiger King’ Joe Exotic dishes on his Dem primary challenge from jail, wants to debate Biden
Tiger King’ Joe Exotic dishes on his Dem primary challenge from jail, wants to debate Biden
July 5 by Chris Donaldson
Move over Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Marianne Williamson, there is another Democrat aiming to topple President Joe Biden in the primaries and his name is Joe Exotic, the star of the Netflix series “Tiger King” who’s running for the White House from the big house.
Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage dished on his decision to mount his longshot run as a Democrat from inside Forth Worth Federal Medical Center, a federal prison facility where he’s serving time after being convicted in 2020 for conspiracy to commit murder for attempting to hire hitmen to kill his big game refuge rival Carole Baskin, who is also featured in “Tiger King,” as well as animal-related charges.
The trials and tribulations of the flamboyant, openly gay, exotic animal zookeeper were detailed in the hit series that drew a massive audience when it initially aired in 2020 during the early days of the COVID pandemic as Americans who were locked down and housebound entertained themselves by watching the captivating true crime story featuring a collection of strange and colorful characters, none more so than Joe Exotic.
The candidate talked about running as a Democrat, criticized the party’s current direction and said that he wants to “debate President Biden on his failed policies and broken promises,” in an exclusive interview with conservative website Breitbart News.
“There’s just so many issues I don’t agree with, but I’m running as a Democrat because I think we can change some of the Democrat Party because I believe in abortion, I believe you have the right to carry a gun, and I believe that you have the freedom to have private property, so I kind of got everybody in one basket here,” he told the outlet. “And I think if I do anything in this, I might be able to break the ice to show the American people that it doesn’t matter what party you’re in, you can believe, and you can give the rights to everybody because we have 330 million people-plus in this country, there’s no way you can run a country on one party. You just can’t.”
We got to quit fighting everybody else and solving everybody else’s culture problems around the world. We keep raising our debt ceiling, our American people keep working, so our Congress and our government can squander the money away and send it to foreign countries to solve their issues,” he added.
"Meanwhile, we’re neglecting our veterans, we’re neglecting our mental health, we’re neglecting our elderly people, we’re cutting Social Security.”
“We raised the debt ceiling by $4 trillion in order to get by until 2025, with the hope of bringing down a trillion by the year 2030, when they’re gonna have to raise it two more times — how does any of this make sense?” he laughingly told Breitbart.
We’re supposed to be doing this ‘Green New Deal,’ and climate problems, and everything else. We buy our oil and our gas and our energy from countries that have dirtier energy, you know. We can produce it cleaner than any country in the world, but yet we get [energy] from them because we don’t want to destroy our so-called environment,” he added. “But now we’re putting wind farms out in the ocean, now we’re going to destroy our oceans, killing our whales and everything else. Doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s tough,” he told Breitbart of the difficulties of running from prison, “because I don’t have access to being able to do campaign videos and I don’t access to doing rallies. But I have a voice right now.”
“People are literally taking me serious, which surprises the hell out of me because I figured people would make fun of me, but it’s because my platform is legit and my issues are legit.
This system has to change,” Exotic said.