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

Joe Exotic is looking to parlay a recent parody of him on Saturday Night Live into freedom and – a position on President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet.

The one-time Oklahoma zookeeper, 61, told TMZ Tuesday that he wasn’t put off by Bowen Yang playing him during the Weekend Update segment, and thinks he did well with the vocal impression.

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

Exotic, whose story was told in the hit 2020 Netflix doc Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, told the outlet a counselor in the prison he’s held him told him the ‘world is talking about’ him after he was spoofed on the show.

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

He told the outlet that other inmates at the prison he’s being held in woke him from a nap to let him know about the SNL sketch.  

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

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

Authorities said Exotic in December 2017 attempted to bribe an FBI agent to murder Baskin, and was recorded saying, ‘Just like follow her into a mall parking lot and just cap her and drive off.’

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

Exotic told TMZ that he hoped the SNL skit would help bring awareness of his situation to Trump’s attention, and leads to his pardoning and a ‘genuine request to be appointed to the cabinet.’

Exotic told the outlet he believes Trump’s attorney general pick Matt Gaetz could make things happen.

Gaetz said during an April 2022 event in Florida that he ‘would pardon’ Exotic if he was elected president.

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

KOCO reported Tuesday Exotic has penned 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 November 16 

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

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

‘You will have the power to correct this or at least recommend to President Trump to correct this in January of 2025,’ Exotic said in the letter, according to the station, which noted that only Trump would be able to implement the pardon.

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

In September of 2020, Exotic submit to authorities a 257-page report request to the U.S. Department of Justice for his pardon from Trump during his first term.

‘Joseph is scheduled to be released from (Bureau of Prisons) custody in 2037; however, with his comprised health, he will likely die in prison,’ his lawyers said in court docs. 

Exotic in the request asked for ‘a pardon to correct the injustices he has experienced and to have the opportunity to return to providing meaningful contributions to his community.’