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Trump asked if he’d pardon Joe Exotic from ‘Tiger King’ Netflix series

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A White House press briefing about ventilators and death tolls suddenly detoured into Oklahoma’s most notorious ex-zookeeper.

During the April 8, 2020 coronavirus task force briefing, New York Post reporter Steven Nelson asked President Donald Trump the question millions of quarantined Netflix viewers were reportedly asking each other: would he pardon Joe Exotic? The exchange lasted less than a minute, but it became an instant viral clip because Trump had clearly never heard the specifics of the case before Nelson laid them out in the briefing room.

• Nelson referenced Donald Trump Jr.’s earlier SiriusXM radio comment joking about lobbying for a pardon before posing the question directly to the president.
• Trump admitted he knew nothing about the case, asking Nelson point-blank, “What did he do? Did he do what they say he did?”
• Joseph Maldonado-Passage was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in federal prison on two counts of murder-for-hire and 17 wildlife violations tied to a plot against Carole Baskin.

The Question Reached the Podium

Nelson’s question arrived amid a briefing otherwise dominated by ventilator shortages and mounting case counts, a jarring tonal shift that only made sense given how “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” had taken over American living rooms during lockdown. He noted that Donald Trump Jr. had floated the idea, half-joking, on SiriusXM days earlier, and used that as his opening to ask the president directly whether he’d consider a pardon for Maldonado-Passage.

Trump’s first response made clear he hadn’t been briefed on the docuseries or the case behind it. “What did he do? Did he do what they say he did?” he asked Nelson, turning the interview back on the reporter rather than answering outright.

The Back-and-Forth Over Carole Baskin

Nelson filled in the gap, telling the president that Maldonado-Passage was serving 22 years for a murder-for-hire plot targeting Carole Baskin, the Big Cat Rescue operator he’d feuded with for years, plus a stack of federal wildlife charges. That prompted Trump to flip the interrogation again.

“Do you think he did do it? Are you on his side? Are you recommending a pardon?”

Nelson declined to stake out a position either way. Trump, smiling, closed the exchange with a line that instantly spread across social media: “I’ll take a look.” It was a noncommittal answer, but it was also the first time a sitting president had been asked, on the record, to weigh in on Joe Exotic’s fate.

The Case Behind the Punchline

The 22-year sentence, handed down in January 2020, followed a 2019 jury conviction on two counts of murder-for-hire and 17 separate federal wildlife charges connected to Maldonado-Passage’s roadside zoo operation in Oklahoma. Those underlying facts got lost in the meme cycle surrounding the briefing, but they’re the reason Nelson asked the question in the first place — a genuine federal case, not just a punchline from a true-crime documentary.

The Critical Nature of Timing

The question landed at the peak of “Tiger King” mania, when Netflix’s docuseries had become the dominant pop-culture topic of the early pandemic lockdown, giving a niche true-crime story about big-cat breeders and roadside zoos a nationwide audience it never would have found otherwise. That reach is exactly why a reporter felt comfortable working the topic into a briefing built around ventilators and infection curves — and why “I’ll take a look” traveled as far as it did.

Trump never followed up publicly on the remark in the days after the briefing, and no formal pardon request moved through the Department of Justice process. For now, “I’ll take a look” remains the entirety of the record on where the president stands on Joe Exotic’s 22-year sentence.