Park Slope Juice Man Could Be Next President Of The United States

PARK SLOPE, NY — A Park Slope juice man could be the next President of the United States.

Jose Franco, who once accused President Donald Trump of hacking the website of his Seventh Avenue bar Stoop Juice, is running to take over the Oval Office in 2020, he announced this week.

The fruit and vegetable presser has been discouraged about the direction the country has been going for the last several years, but the government shutdown convinced him he had to stand up and take the lead, he told Patch.

"I realize that if you don’t participate, if you are not your own advocate, the leaders that are going to be put in front of you are going to be your inferiors," said Franco, 50, who's owned the juice bar for more than six years.

"I’m just discouraged from the things that I feel are going on."

Franco put out what he called a long Facebook "rant" over the weekend announcing his run and offering President Trump free life coaching lessons.

"Half of my friends thought I was losing my mind," he said.

He has his own backers – one inspired Stoop Juice regular threw together a flyer for Franco — including a photo of him with a Sen. John McCain impersonator — printed 400 and stuck them on windshields around the neighborhood, Franco said.

When angry motorists came to his store to complain, he took his campaign to the street – shutting down his store and walking the sidewalks to remove the leaflets, she said.

He issued a press release Monday apologizing for the incident.

Franco can't remember the name of the supporter who produced the flyers – only her regular order of an all green juice with a side-shot of wheatgrass. But he said he'd work on a way to boost his memory.

"If I am elected I will be working on acronyms to remember people names," Franco said.

Franco said he's fully serious about his run for the White House.

"I think running for public office is like jury duty," he said. "It's your responsibility. If not us, who’s going to do it?"

If elected, he said he wants to work on campaign finance reforms and toning down the "divisive" messages from both political parties.

"Everybody is pointing out negatives and nobody is pointing out the positive," he said. "I’m hoping for things the way they should be and I’m hoping if you stick to your guns long enough, that's the way they have to become."

While it will be his first time dipping his toe in politics since he was class president for his Bronx high school, Franco has already had some run-ins with Trump.

In March, he said the Stoop Juice website was hacked with the infiltrator adding "NO FAT A--ES" to the company's slogan. He said he then received prank phone calls from somebody who sounded like Trump telling him to "Stop being a little b--ch."

Patch file photo

Franco believed Trump was behind the hack at the time because the juice bar owner had tweeted anti-Trump posts. A White House spokeswoman previously told Patch it wasn't the case.

He never figured out who was behind the hack or the calls, though he says he's now is now "95 percent" sure it wasn't Trump.

"It’s not something you could put past him," Franco said.

Franco didn't say what party line he would seek run on for his presidential bid, but said it was important he stuck to his ideals during the entire process.

"I'd rather lose and lose with integrity than change into something that I’m not," he said. "I have to live with that when I’m out of politics."

To get on the ballot in New York, a candidate needs to collect about 5,000 signatures to be in the Democrat or Republican primary or 15,000 signatures to run as an independent, according to the Board of Elections.

Image courtesy of Jose Franco