Joe Exotic Dishes on Life in Prison, What Carole Baskin Can’t Take Away From Him

Transcript

00:00It's been four years since Tiger King's self-described gay gun-toting cowboy with a mullet,

00:05Joe Exotic Maldonado's passage became a household name.

00:10Now, the former zookeeper is awaiting to hear if his conviction for animal abuse

00:14and the alleged murder-for-hire plot on rival Carole Baskin will be overturned in 2025.

00:20If so, Joe Exotic, who is currently incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth,

00:25Texas, has big plans, and he exclusively told Us Weekly all about them. He said,

00:31I want to testify in front of Congress about the prison and justice system

00:35and what really goes on in here. He tells us about life right now.

00:39It's tough. I'm in a medical facility. Part of the roof is missing and we have plastic bags

00:44above our beds taped to the ceiling to guide water out the window. In the last week, I caught 15 rats

00:51on sticky boards under my bed. Now, 140 of us have scabies. However, I run a soup kitchen in

00:56here. That's something Carole and nobody else can take away from me that I give back to society.

01:02And now that a lot of time has passed, he tells us about Carole Baskin.

01:06I watched Tiger King for the first time a month ago. We're working on a lawsuit,

01:09so the prison let my lawyers come in with it on a computer. I was disgusted with the way the

01:14Netflix docuseries director Eric Goode portrayed the situation. Carole and I never had a deadly

01:20fight going on. It was blown out of proportion. I never saw Carole's face until my trial.

01:25Now, in 2021, he revealed that he had prostate cancer, which he said is now in remission,

01:31but they now believe he has cancer in his left lung. He tells us,

01:34I have to take it as it comes. I still have faith that I'm going to walk out of here.

01:39I just need to live for the next five or six months and hope for the best.