Spanish
Miami.- American Peter Simel, who went viral two months ago for his resemblance to the deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, stated that he will run for mayor of Palm Beach, the Florida city where the Mar-a-Lago club of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, is located.
Simel, a 71-year-old retired professional tennis player, announced his political intentions for 2028 on his Instagram account @real.palmbeach.pete, which already has more than 266,000 followers after he created it last March 19 to deny that he was Epstein, as a user had claimed in a viral video.
"After much thought, I am announcing that I will be running to be the mayor of Palm Beach in the next election of 2028. My campaign will be built around issues that truly matter to the people of Palm Beach. I am excited to use my platform to do what is right for the community," he wrote in a post.
The man seeks to capitalize on the popularity he gained after a video went viral at the beginning of the year in which a user recorded him while driving a convertible on Interstate 95 in Florida and claims that he is the deceased Epstein.
«It's alive! It's alive!», exclaims the author of the video.
Capitalizing on Virality Due to Resemblance to Jeffrey Epstein
After the recording, Simel created an account, which in a few days surpassed 200,000 users, to deny that he was the deceased pedophile and even underwent a DNA test. The Palm Beach Police Department had presented a case with at least two dozen similar victims, but the grand jury ended up charging only two minor prostitution charges instead of serious assault charges against Epstein, who died in 2019 in a New York jail. Although there are still two years until the local elections, Simel is already selling political merchandise and has created a website where he promises free botox for residents, tennis lessons, convertible cars, and "imported" water from New York to make pizzas and bagels. "We are seriously considering it, and it's a move. We want to make Palm Beach truly great," the aspirant expressed in an interview with Fox News.Although local media outlets have not found documents to prove that he has officially registered his campaign, the man has asserted that he is making the legal preparations to do so when the time comes.
