The presidential pardon is not really about letting innocent people who were wrongly convicted out of prison. Instead, the president’s power to pardon convictions and commute sentences is generally used to give a reprieve to prisoners who have shown they’ve reformed or who may have been given excessively harsh prison sentences relative to their crimes.
Neither of those things apply to Joe Exotic, who is currently in prison for the attempted murder of rival Carole Baskin. Joe has not expressed remorse or shown he’s reformed, he had a party limo hired because he thought fellow reality TV Star Donald Trump would pardon him on his last day in office, but that hilariously didn’t pan out for him.
Joe dealt with this by claiming Trump didn’t pardon him because Trump is a homophobe, which is probably true but I doubt played into his political calculus.
I was too innocent and too GAY to deserve a Pardon from Trump. I only mattered to Don Jr. when he needed to make a comment about me to boost his social media post. Boy were we all stupid to believe he actually stood for Equal Justice? His corrupt friends all come first. pic.twitter.com/ysGfwnqlHi
— Joe Exotic (@joe_exotic) January 20, 2021
I just think it didn’t benefit Trump to pardon Joe, who is an absolute clown of a human and not the sort of classy gentleman Trump isn’t but thinks he is.
Joe isn’t giving up, though, and he’s already started trying to get a pardon from President Joe Biden.
TMZ reports Joe has his hopes up again and still looking for a pardon he doesn’t deserve and hasn’t earned beyond having been on a TV show.
TMZ’s obtained emails Joe’s sent out to his team from prison, in which he expresses hopefulness that the new administration will come through with a pardon … after failing to make Trump’s last-minute list.
Exotic says he has more confidence in Biden regarding criminal justice and prison reform, and claims he watched a TV special on VP Kamala Harris … leading him to believe she can “help clean up the corruption in the DOJ and other agencies.”
Let me make this really clear: Joe Exotic wasn’t set up or conspiracied or a victim of corruption or malicious prosecution or whatever line he’s selling. The dude is famous because he just oozes slime from every pore on his body and a jury had no problem believing that he paid someone to murder Carole Baskin. If he’s innocent, he can present that evidence to an appeals court judge, but I really don’t think he is. And if Donald Trump thought that pardoning Joe was a bad move, he doesn’t really have a prayer with a president who still has a reputation to maintain.