If Joe Exotic Is Pardoned, It Shows Trump's Reality TV Obsession

From Esquire

Of course it would end this way. In the final hours of his presidency, Trump is gearing up for a pardoning spree of over 100 names, the mixture of crooks and ne'er-do-wells offering a line up of people who he might need to curry favour with in the future.

There is Dr Salomon Melgen, an influential eye doctor in Palm Beach, who was sentenced to 17 years for healthcare fraud. There's also rapper Lil Wayne, who has been charged with illegal weapons possession while on a private jet last year and faces up to ten years in prison.

But the name being floated which has caught the most attention is Joe Exotic, the tattooed big cat obsessive who was the subject of Netflix documentary Tiger King last year. Exotic is currently serving 22 years for killing five tigers and attempting to hire a hitman to take out his rival cat-lover, Carole Baskin.

According to a news reporter from an Oklahoma network, Exotic's team are “absolutely confident” they will receive a pardon tomorrow, with his attorney stating that there is “a limousine parked about half a mile from the prison” in Texas. He added that the first order of business was to get a haircut, then “probably go and get some pizzas, steak, maybe a McRib.”

The potential inclusion of Exotic on the pardon list is a fitting end to a presidency in which the surreal and the ridiculous have become par for the course. He might seem like a hilarious plot-twist who brings the eccentric series into the real world, but Exotic is a not so funny representation of the kind of man Trump wants to stand up for.

It stands to reason that Trump would see cause to grant clemency to a man who made himself feel powerful by asserting his authority over caged animals. Additionally, Exotic's obsession with conspiracy theories about Baskin puts him in league with the tinfoil hat terrorists who stormed the Capitol last week. It is unclear what, if anything, Trump might want from Exotic in the future – perhaps he's hoping it'll distract the media from the even more sinister names on there. That might just be working.

A man obsessed with ratings and television fame, who sees threat in everyone who might muscle in on his spotlight; perhaps Trump saw someone who murdered animals for profit and commissioned a murder and thought: 'That's my kinda guy'.

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