Dateline NBC - BONUS Interview: Josh Mankiewicz and Joe Exotic

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

Shortly after his April 2019 conviction on two counts of murder for hire, “Tiger King” Joe Exotic spoke from prison with Dateline’s Josh Mankiewicz.Watch Josh’s interview with Joe Exotic here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-KBOpkoM2s&t=2s

How'd you get the name Joe Exotic? Years ago, back in 2003, 2004, I started doing educational shows at fairs and festivals and stuff like that. Little kid, I could never say my real name, which was Joe Schreiber. So they called me Joe and over the years we just turned around and went with Joe's Sonic. There you go. And a brand was born. And a brand was born, yes sir. How does one become the Tiger King? You know, people on social media actually are the ones who branded me with the Tiger King? You know people on social media actually are the ones who

branded me with the Tiger King. This is sort of the marketplace at work right? I mean people don't really want to show up and see deer but they do with tigers. Tigers and bears are very fascinating for people, you know, because they can feed the tigers with a pole and chunks of meat and they can feed bears with a tube and marshmallows and cookies. Are those things good for bears? That kind of food? Well, you know, a certain amount.

You wouldn't want to make that an all-day diet. So part of our diet plans were we were only allowed to sell so much junk food every day. Tell me about Cub Petting. Cub Petting, we started that back in probably 2003, and it actually started in schools as an educational tool to talk to kids about the rainforest and habitat of tigers and different animals and how we're destroying their habitat. And how old were the cubs that you'd bring into schools? Four weeks. It's okay to take a four week old-old tiger cub away from its mother?

That's not a problem? Okay, well, you've got to understand in captivity, first of all, most of the mothers don't know how to take care of their young crop away. During the summertime, we deal with rat snakes, wild snakes, copperheads crawling into the dens and eating the babies or biting the babies. So we took them away most generally to actually save and take care of the little ones. So cub petting, people like cub petting. It's a way to get close to animals in a way that they otherwise probably never would.

Right, right. And you know it's the best way to educate people too. Again, the time people sit and they pet the cub and they fall in love with this little baby tiger that they would normally never see in their lifetime. They leave with a little more respect of trying to help us save the rainforest and their habitat by recycling and using products that are not from the rainforest. So it's an education tool there is. Was cup petting lucrative for you? You make a lot of money off that?

Well, I mean, it is what paid the expenses to build the park to be what it is today. And to the charge that you're exploiting animals for profit your answer would be what? You can see where all the money went in large cages and brand new cages and taking in animals that no one else would take in. There's a video where you're shooting a Carol doll that anybody can see on the internet. You've spent a lot of time speaking very disparagingly and in a very hostile way toward her, but this is way beyond some passionate argument

about animal rights. Baskin, you know, but the crazier we got on the show and the more outlandish we got, the more viewers we got. We tried real calm animal shows and we didn't get that many viewers. When we turned it into Joke on Love and curved it more like Jackass the movie and people just, they loved it. I people just they loved it I don't why I don't know you know it got to the point that we had fundraisers for other facilities and I raised $20,000 in two hours you know sometimes because we had that many viewers from being that crazy. Call will be terminated in two minutes.

Oh, thanks. Fifty minutes goes by fast, doesn't it? Certainly does. Call me back. All right. All right. This is the prepaid collect call from Joseph Patton, an inmate at the Grady County Jail. Joe Gone Wild is the kind of TV show most people never see.

That was the most watched show. So we did bring some animals on at the time, but the way that the guys built the website manhattan what right side of the issue blockhead you can't that while watching the show in the world so it was a very good was a record as well as just a television show.

Right, right, right. And the more outrageous it got, the more viewers you got. And it even developed from there. Then in the chat room, you could dare us to do stuff and you could

make a donation to the zoo. You'd call the office and the girls would take your credit card and make the donation and we would do the dare and to give you an example i don't know if you've ever run into the adult diaper people on facebook uh they're not they're not in my favorites no okay well that's a crazy group to ever have following you. So one night this person dares us to wear an adult diaper through the rest of the show and gave us 500 bucks for it for the animals. So hell, you know, 500 bucks for 15 minutes

of wearing the diapers, lift them diapers on. And it just got crazier from there. And the crazier we got, the more money they donated to the zoo. Sounds like you understand television pretty well. Yeah, I mean, it's just the way it was. And then, you know, we didn't just make money for the zoo. We actually turned Joe Don Wild into a good thing too, and that was we would have auctions at a certain night in order to raise money for different charities and,

you know, little kids that were sick that had a last wish and stuff like that. Let me switch gears a little bit here. Why did you want to get into politics? Why did I want to get into politics? Because of the exact same reason why I'm into it. The Endangered Species Act or trying to have somebody killed? It's laws like the Endangered Species Act. Because, like, Oklahoma introduced over 3,000 bills last year during the last election.

And 3,000 more bills have been lucky to take your rights away. You actually wanted to change some laws. I write a lot of letters to senators and congressmen and everything else, and you never hear back from them, ever. I made a big one, and I was like, how do me and you ever get hurt in this country without having to do something stupid, like blow something up or whatever.

Woke up the next morning and I signed my name to the government, the presidential president of the United States, and I made access to 37 ballots on my own. And the idea was just to sort of improve customer service. Well, this was about what's right or wrong. And it got to where I enjoyed politics more than I enjoyed the zoo. Well, that's what I mean. As you were saying, you know, you write letters.

Nobody ever returns them. So you thought, you know, one night, maybe I'll do it myself, and America would experience sort of better customer service from their politicians, if you were elected. Yes. Yes. Let's get to the other thing that got you in legal trouble. The government says that on two different occasions, you approach different people with plans to kill Carol. True or false? False. You didn't want to kill Carol? No. Carol was the furthest thing from my mind.

Joe, I don't think Carol has ever been the furthest thing from your mind ever since Carol first entered your mind. You are, you sound like you've had a really long feud with her and the two of you have gone back and forth and you've cost each other a lot of pride and a lot of money and a lot of business and now this has ultimately cost you your freedom. Joe, stop that fight. This call will be terminated in two minutes. Alright, one more time. Call's back.

Okay. Bye. Hello. This is the prepaid. Charges for your call have been accepted. Alright. You know, after all the threats and all the fights and all the courtroom battles and all those videos, it does not seem impossible that you would have lost your temper at Carol to the point where you would think about hiring somebody to have her taken out.

No, because it wasn't making any difference because I was already exiting the zoo and the industry. But isn't this about more than just whether or not you were in the zoo business? I mean, this was a long time sort of Hatfields and McCoys battle between you and Carol. It's not, it doesn't strike me as crazy that maybe you would have wanted to have her cattle. Why would I have wanted to? Because she, she, to have the industry.

I was done with it. would have wanted to have her canceled. Why would I have wanted to? Because she had the industry. I was done with it. Well, at the end of the trial, when the jury went out, you feel confident? You think you're going to get acquitted? Even the lawyers thought we were going to get acquitted. So that verdict Mr. Keelan was quite a shock. It comes to a shock to everybody. Even some of the reporters that were in there,

because the day before they took just a common sense of how it was going. And the reporters were even like, Joe, I think you got this. If you had kept your feelings about Carole Baskin to yourself, if you had not spouted off about her, if you had not continued this feud, I understand you can't control what she does, but you could control yourself. If you had just shut up about Carole Baskin, I'm thinking you and i would be having this conversation face to face because you wouldn't be in lockup man you and my husband are

shit exactly the same thing me and my big mouth is what got me in here because my big mouth is what made it so easy for them to set me up do you think you got a shot at a presidential pardon here? I think I have a shot at honesty and justice prevailing at some point, yes. All right. Good luck. I appreciate it. Thank you for talking with us.

All right, buddy. Thank you. Thanks.