Joe Exotic responds to SNL impersonation… and focused on getting pardon and cabinet position from Trump

Joe Exotic wants to turn a recent parody of him on Saturday Night Live into freedom and – a position on the cabinet of newly elected President Donald Trump.

The former Oklahoma zookeeper, 61, shared TMZ On Tuesday, he said he wasn’t put off by Bowen Yang playing him during the Weekend Update segment, and thinks he did a good job with the vocal impression.

The Garden City, Kansas-born media personality said he thought Yang’s performance on the NBC variety show was “much better” than John Cameron Mitchell’s in the 2022 Peacock drama Joe vs Carole.

Exotic, whose story was told in the hit 2020 Netflix documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, told the outlet that a counselor at the prison where he was held told him that the “world is talking about him” after he was jailed. show was faked.

In the skit on the show, Yang’s Exotic asked to be appointed director of the Federal Fish and Wildlife in the incoming administration.

He told the newspaper that other inmates at the prison where he is being held woke him up from a nap to inform him of the SNL sketch.

Trump was pictured Tuesday at a SpaceX rocket launch in Brownsville, Texas

Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in January 2020 in his native Oklahoma in connection with a 2017 murder plot of his business philanthropist Carole Baskin.

Authorities said Exotic tried to bribe an FBI agent to kill Baskin in December 2017 and was recorded saying, “Just like you follow her into a mall parking lot, just lock her up and drive away.”

Exotic was also convicted in connection with numerous wildlife law violations in the deaths of five tigers, and violations of the Endangered Species Act.

Exotic told TMZ that he hoped the SNL sketch would help bring awareness of his situation to Trump’s attention, and lead to his pardon and a “sincere request to be appointed to the Cabinet.”

Exotic told the newspaper he believes Trump’s choice of attorney general, Matt Gaetz, could make things happen.

Gaetz said at an April 2022 event in Florida that he would “pardon” Exotic if elected president.

“That’s the extent of the commitment I can make,” Gaetz Exotic’s attorney Autumn Beck told Blackledge in a YouTube clip, adding that he had received letters from Exotic in the past.

KOCO reported Tuesday Exotic wrote another letter to Gaetz, who resigned from his congressional post in Florida after Trump nominated him for the high-profile position last week.

Bowen Yang played Exotic during the Weekend Update segment on SNL on November 16

Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in January 2020 in his native Oklahoma in connection with a 2017 murder plot of his business archive Carole Baskin

In the letter, Exotic congratulated Gaetz on the appointment; and told him he is innocent of the charges he was convicted of.

“You will have the power to correct this or at least recommend that President Trump correct this by January 2025,” Exotic said in the letter, according to the channel, which noted that only Trump could implement the pardon.

He also asked for a leadership position at the Fish and Wildlife Service after his pardon; and said he would brief Congress years after his sentence with testimony about “what is really going on in the American prison system.”

In September 2020, Exotic submitted to authorities a 257-page report request to the US Department of Justice seeking a pardon from Trump during his first term.

“Joseph is expected to be released from (Bureau of Prisons) custody in 2037; But due to his poor health, he will likely die in prison,” his lawyers said in court papers.

In the request, Exotic asked for “a pardon to right the injustices he has experienced and to be given the opportunity to return to making meaningful contributions to his community.”