Tiger King star and convicted criminal Joe Exotic just might get an early release from prison, as Donald Trump has promised to “look into” potentially giving the pop culture icon a presidential pardon. At a government briefing on Wednesday, Trump fielded questions from the press and was directly asked by a reporter about his opinion on the hit Netflix series and how he feels about Joe Exotic. Though the president of the United States seems to suggest he hasn’t yet caught Tiger King, Trump also says he’ll take a look at Joe’s situation to see if the former big cat breeder genuinely deserves to be pardoned.
“I don’t know, I know nothing about him. He has 22 years for what, what did he do?” Trump told a reporter when he was first asked about Tiger King. The president is then informed about the charges against Joe Exotic, which involves allegations of a murder-for-hire plot against rival Carole Baskin. It would appear Trump will first need to catch up on the series before giving an official answer as to whether he’d pardon Joe, though he did say this when he was again asked about the possibility: “I’ll look into it.” You can watch a video clip of Trump’s answer below.
Trump’s holding back on giving an answer for now, but many Tiger King viewers have been calling for the release of Joe Exotic from prison after watching the Netflix series. This includes Cardi B, who went so far as to suggest launching a GoFundMe campaign to help have the pop culture icon released from prison. “He shall be free,” the famous rapper said in the tweet. From his prison cell, Joe has also been receiving massive amounts of fan mail from viewers of the show, and there’s certainly no shortage of people who want to see the man released from prison, despite the allegations against him.
Perhaps it’s in part due to so many of us staying at home in recent weeks, but Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness became an instant hit for Netflix when it premiered on the streaming service last month. The documentary series focuses on the feud between Joe Exotic and Big Cat Rescue CEO Carole Baskin, culminating with Joe’s conviction for allegedly plotting to have Baskin killed. With countless memes and social media posts about the series, it seems to be all that most everyone is talking about these days, so it was a matter of time before the president of the United States himself was asked to weigh in on the matter.
Days before his streaming premiere on Netflix, Joe Exotic filed a $94 million lawsuit demanding a presidential pardon from Trump. “This lawsuit has been filed in the name of Justice, The Trump Administration must be made aware of the Overreach, perjury, abuse of power and the failure to uphold the Oath of their position which is truth and Justice for all,” Exotic, who is representing himself, said in the lawsuit. We’ll see if he ultimately gets his wish, but he’s closer than ever to making it happen. The video clip of Trump speaking about Joe Exotic shown above comes to us from Fox 10 Phoenix on YouTube.
