The front page of Joe Exotic’s 2024 presidential campaign website. Exotic is gay, but doesn’t think LGBTQ+ people should “force it in anyone’s faces” (JoeExotic2024.com)
Joe Biden and Donald Trump seem set to face off in the upcoming US elections in November 2024, but you might be surprised to find that Biden isn’t the only presidential candidate called Joe this year.
Tiger King star Joe Exotic just shared his presidential policies with Newsweek, sent from his prison cell after first announcing his transphobia-riddled campaign on social media in 2023.
Exotic, who is gay, is currently serving a 21-year prison sentence after being convicted on multiple charges in 2019 – including two counts of hiring hit men to murder bisexual wildlife activist Carole Baskin. He was also convicted of killing five tigers in 2017 without a veterinarian present.
In an exclusive chat with Newsweek on Sunday (26 May), he laid out his views on abortion, gun ownership and LGBTQ+ rights. One key quote saw Exotic explain that while he is openly gay himself, he doesn’t believe that people should “force it in anyone’s face.”
“As a gay man I don’t agree with everything that the LGBTQ+ community is doing,” he added. “If you want to be transgender then pay for the surgery, the government is not going to. And you can sleep with who you want but don’t force it in anyone’s face.”
He continued: “The pride parades with people in G-strings and such is not OK with me while little kids are in the crowd. Put some clothes on and be proud of who you are allowed to love and marry—not how naked you can be in public.”
This follows an X (formerly Twitter) post the convicted felon shared on the platform in the run up to Pride month in June, telling Pride-goers to cover up in case “little kids” see them.
Turning his attention away from the moral dangers of G-strings for a minute, he told Newsweek about his bizarre views on gun and abortion rights: “You can have pro-choice and have the right to [bear] arms, but I am not going to let you have [three] abortions because you are lazy or a slob and can’t put on a condom.
“Just like I am not going to let you have a machine gun, but I will go along with one abortion as a mistake and let you have a handgun or rifle.”
Joe Exotic’s presidential campaign website
Exotic also told Newsweek that running his campaign from behind bars has been tricky, to say the least.
In May, reports began to circulate that the Tiger King star’s campaign had been suspended by the FEC (Federal Election Commission), but Exotic responded by telling Newsweek via a voice message that his campaign was “far from over.”
His presidential campaign slogan is currently: “F**k their rules, write me in,” and also #FixThisS**t.
According to his campaign website, which features a photoshopped image of Exotic sitting beside a tiger on the White House lawn, his running mate is Thomas Wolf CPA from Ohio, “a Certified Public Accountant and QuickBooks ProAdvisor with over twenty years of experience.”
The “policies” section of his website includes a policy on the Mattel doll Barbie. It reads: “Barbie is not a very good role model because she is about makeup and glamour instead of teaching young girls to just love themselves for who they are and not what they look like.”
Another policy is simply listed as “smoking.” It reads: “I am a smoker and have been for over 40 years, this is another thing that you should be able to decide on your own what you want to do with your own body and I also think as a business owner I should be able to decide which kind of clientele that I want in my business whether they smoke or not smoke and they should have that right to enter on their own risk.”
The site also contains a long message from Joe Exotic, which, amongst other things, praises Elon Musk (who he refers to as a “genius”) and encourages people to “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.”