The “Tiger King” is getting into the 2024 presidential race, he said Wednesday, despite the fact he is serving a 21-year federal prison sentence and that “Carole hates my guts.”
According to Newsweek, Joseph Maldonado-Passage, known as “Joe Exotic” or the “Tiger King,” has launched a campaign website, with a personal message for his potential supporters claiming his campaign is not a joke.
“Thank you for your interest in my Campaign. Yes, I know I am in Federal Prison and you might think this is a joke but it’s not. It is my Constitutional right to do this even from here.”
“So put aside that I am gay, that I am in prison for now, that I used drugs in the past, that I had more than one boyfriend at once and that Carole hates my guts. This all has not a thing to do with me being able to be your voice. The best thing you have going for supporting me is that I am used to fighting my whole life just to get by. I am broke, they have taken everything I ever worked for away, and it’s time we take this country back,” he wrote on the campaign site.
Maldonado-Passage filed to run as a Libertarian.
Joe Exotic announces 2024 Presidential run https://t.co/IjLrO2t0ac
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) March 15, 2023
Maldonado-Passage, the former owner of the Greater Wynnewood Animal Park, was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of murder-for-hire in 2018.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma, prosecutors gave someone $3,000 to travel from Oklahoma to Florida to carry out the murder of big cat activist Carole Baskin.
Maldonado-Passage was also indicted on 19 counts of various wildlife violations and animal cruelty charges.
Maldonado-Passage attempted to have his conviction overturned but lost his appeal in 2022.
