Tiger King for president: Joe ‘Exotic’ Maldonado-Passage announces 2024 run
Maria Leaf
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Joseph Maldonado-Passage, known to millions as “Joe Exotic,” has announced he’s running for president in 2024.
The former owner of Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park rose to stardom on the Netflix show Tiger King in 2020. He is serving a 21-year prison term but said that won’t stop him from trying to reach the White House.
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“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,” Maldonado-Passage wrote in a statement on his campaign website.
“I have been put here only because of the corruption in the Department of Justice, three felons that were told how to lie under oath to further this agenda, two corrupt Assistant U.S. Attorneys, two corrupt FBI Agents. and one corrupt Federal Wildlife Agent,” he added.
Maldonado-Passage, who is running as a Libertarian, unveiled his campaign platform, including his stance on everything from criminal justice reform to taxes.
“As a Libertarian, I believe that the IRS should be shut down because, once you work to buy something, it should become yours until you sell it and someone else pays sales tax on it,” he wrote. “You should not have to pay our government to work either, the American people work day in and day out and our politicians spend it frivolously, like our lives and hard work means nothing. So cut the funding, and it would cut the spending.”
This isn’t his first attempt to win public office. Maldonado-Passage attempted a run for president in 2016 and ran for governor of Oklahoma in 2018.
“I am here because I have a world platform to make these politicians listen to your and my concerns and give us some answers for once because all they do is lie to all of us, take our hard earned money calling it taxes, and give it away to foreign countries without them giving us anything back,” he added.
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Maldonado-Passage said neither his sexual orientation nor his battle with Carole Baskin should dissuade voters from hearing what he has to say.
“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 then one boyfriend at once and that Carole hates my guts,” he said. “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. And yes, I have people in mind that can help run this country a hell of a lot better then they are now, so lets cross that bridge when we get to it.”