ZM's Bree & Clint - ZM's Bree & Clint with Joe Exotic Tiger King (full)

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

Here's a name that you might not have thought of since lockdown in 2020, Joe Exotic, the Tiger King. We tried out luck to get him on the phone and we're 99% sure it's really him! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is this Joe Exotic, Tiger King? It is. Hey! Man, you've been harder to find than Carol Baskin's husband. Fuck, man. Yeah, fuck, man. That crazy bitch. Hey, Merry Christmas, all the way from New Zealand.

It's good to talk to you, Tiger King. Well, I was good to talk to you on. I appreciate the support. And tell everybody over there, I send you. my love and respect because I have a lot of fans from the United Kingdom. It's crazy. So we're not in the United Kingdom.

We're in New Zealand and I just wanted to know. Do you know... You're still across the pond. No, we're underneath Australia. We're near Australia. We're near Australia. Okay. Yeah. Have you ever been to Australia before, Joe? Shit, man.

I've never been out of the United States. Haven't you? Do you have plans once you get out of jail to go traveling? Okay, here's my plans. Okay, I want to get out, and then I got to go to Mexico and get George. Gotcha. And then I want to go to South Africa and get really involved in a baby elephant orphanage.

Right. And then I want to go to Borneo and get involved in an orangutan orphanage. Okay. And then I have this, I've always done charity work for sick little kids, you know. So my goal is to travel the third world countries and pay to fix 5,000 little kids as cleft pallets. You want to fix cleft pellets? Yeah, little kids that have born with cleft pallets so they don't get bullied their whole life. Whereabouts do you want to do that, Joe?

Well, I want to do it in different countries, you know, like South Africa and Guyana and all of the third world countries. And I want to work with Operation Smile and the mercy ship, you know? Yep. Yeah. Okay. So I'll just hit you with some cold hard facts. You're currently serving a 21-year sentence. To do that, you'd have to get some serious help.

and you are leaning on the likes of President Trump for that help. Is that true? Is that fair to say? Okay. Here's the deal. I just hired President Trump's lawyer, Peter Tickton, that was his drill sergeant in the military academy, so they've been friends a long time.

Okay. If President Trump doesn't help me, I only have four more years. Of life? No, a prison. Oh, right, I was going to say it. Until he's eligible for parole. Well, in federal prison, you don't get parole. Right.

You just serve a certain percent of your time. Okay. You know, I've been programming and, you know, I get good time and all that stuff. So I've knocked seven years off of my sentence already. Wow. For good behavior, Joe? Yeah. We're talking to Joe Exotic, Tiger King at the moment, live from which penitentiary are you in, Joe?

Whereabouts are you? I'm in a federal medical center in Fort Worth, Texas. In Fort Worth, Texas. Are you allowed to have a phone in there? Because that's what we found interesting. We saw your post on Instagram and it said, hey, I'm up for some interviews, if you guys are keen. And I found interesting that you were able to post this stuff and take calls. Are you allowed to have a phone in there?

You can have, you have tablets. Everything's about money. in here. Right. Okay. They charge you 50 cents a minute. Whoa. Yeah.

I need to ask you, Joe, when Tiger King came out in 2020, because you were in prison back then, were you able to watch the show when it was playing out? Believe it or not, I didn't see it for the first time until last week. Last week? Are you kidding? Yeah. How do you feel you came across? Yeah, what did you think of it?

I was pissed. Yeah, what, do you think they got quite a few different parts of you wrong? What didn't you like? Well, you know, you know, I didn't film for Tiger King. No. Okay, I was in jail two years before Tiger King was filmed. Yeah. They took all that footage off my YouTube channel that I was filming for a reality show, okay?

And what upsets me, though, guys, is it's done nothing to help tigers. show done nothing to help tigers because they filmed people like SAF the girl that lost her arm yeah they they interviewed her in a junkyard okay instead of they should have set her in front of that tiger cage and let her explain that it wasn't that tiger's fault and she went to back against the government said make sure that we didn't have to put that tiger down because she took the blame for it. Right.

Okay. And she could have talked about tigers in captivity. She could have talked about tigers in the wild, you know, and then they interviewed the hit man in a bathtub. Who does that, you know? And, and, and, and, and then they interviewed John, the whole show with no shirt on, you know. You know, they, they had an agenda. Yeah.

And then they made, and then they made me out to be the method. I'm like, I'm the only motherfucker in the whole show with a full set of teeth wearing clothes. What's going on here? You know? Yeah. Hey, Joe, considering, obviously, that's wild to me that you've literally just seen it last week.

When you get out in four years, do you have any plans to make your own reality show or make your own documentary? I am. I have six terabytes of never seen footage from that zoo. Really? And I'm going to show the real truth of what went on at that zoo. And I'm going to explain what happened and how this all went down because, you know,

they didn't, they didn't explain anything about how my mom and dad got screwed out of all this. You know, they didn't, they didn't explain that Jeff conned his way onto the deed of the land. You know, pretending he was a millionaire and then find out that he was broke after he was. name on the land. You know, they didn't, it wasn't a documentary. It was a hit piece. We're talking to Joe Exotic Tiger King live from an American jail in Fort Worth, Texas at the moment, and we know your time is precious, we know we're running out of time. I want to get some messages and some thoughts from you. If this podcast reached someone like Carol Baskin, what's your message for her right now? You know, Carol.

Carol, Carol, I don't, you know, people have my argument with Carol way out of proportion because Carol, Carol, me and Carol just made money off of each other, okay? Carol had her followers, and she had them brainwashed that I was abusing baby tigers because I'd taken away from their mom. Yep. And I would let you pet them, okay? Yeah. Well, I made my money with my followers on Joe ExoticTV.com. Convincing people she was that shit crazy and she killed her husband. Okay.

Because who is an adult woman goes around with flowers on your head all the time, okay? It was simple, okay? I never seen or talked to Carol Baskin until my trial. I never saw her in real life until my trial. So what you're saying to us, Joe, is that whole thing with you and Carol was publicity for both of you. you to make money off of each other? Absolutely. Yeah.

Absolutely. And that's all it was. And Jeff Lowe used that to use this whole murder-for-hire plot in order to get my zoo. And it worked for him. It absolutely worked for him. But Carol, to this day, okay, again, none of this was about tigers because Carol gave all of her tigers away to Turpentine Creek in Arkansas. They're taking care of her tigers.

she sold her property there where she had her zoo for $19.5 million so Carol got what Carol wanted and that was to be rich and not have to take care of tigers. Well, you know what? I didn't know that.

I didn't know that she'd sold the zoo and made that much money. Joe, before you go... Yeah, she sold the property for a housing development. Yeah, wow. Joe, before you go, are you okay?

Are you doing all right? Yeah, how are you doing, Joe? Are you doing all right in jail? Yeah. Yeah, I'm... I mean, I'm here. You know, right now I've got a cold so I feel like crap, but, you know, I've got lung cancer and prostate cancer,

and I'm dealing with that, and, you know, I'm holding my own. You know, would it help if Trump would hurry up and let me out of here so I could go get real doctors? That would be amazing. But, you know, for prison, I'm doing okay. Yeah, okay. Well, that's nice to hear.

And do you have a message for Kiwis listening down here in New Zealand? It's almost Christmas. What's your message to New Zealand as listening to this interview at the moment? You know, Merry Christmas to all of you. I send my living respect to everybody over New Zealand. You have some of the world's most fascinating wild animals, and I intend on coming down there and helping you one day with conservation to make sure they stay alive and well.

You're a fascinating person, Joe, and we appreciate your time. all the way from New Zealand and from the Brean Clint show. Merry Christmas, Joe. Merry Christmas. I love y'all. Thank you. That's Joe Exotic. The Tiger King. Live from Fort Worth, Texas. He's gone. He's got another call to take.

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