Martin Shkreli’s Hissy Fit: “I’d Destroy [Sanders] In Any Debate About Pharmaceuticals.”
Last week Turin Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli wrote Bernie Sanders a $2,700 check, the legal maximum for an individual donor. But, as Maria Bartiromo bluntly pointed out to Shkreli on Friday’s edition of Mornings with Maria:
“He rejected you. He doesn’t want your donation.”
But that’s okay, Shkreli smirks, he never cared about Sanders anyway:
“I think he’s a demagogue. He’ll say anything to get a vote, and for me to be his piñata is unacceptable.”
Apparently, Shkreli also believes that only a delusional sociopath like himself or one of his fellow CEOs or hedge funders can really understand how a price-gouging pharmaceutical company works.
“Because he doesn’t understand,” Bartiromo interrupts skeptically. To which Shkreli confirms, “I don’t think he understands pharmaceuticals at all.” He then tries to convince us that really he’s not a terrible person. He donates “$5-to-$10 million to charity every year.” And unlike most CEOs he doesn’t draw a single penny in salary, preferring to scrape by on his ill-begotten hoard of billions.
Oh, and guess what? Shkreli offered to donate $50,000 to the same AIDS clinic where Sanders sent his $2,700 check. But the AIDS clinic doesn’t seem to want his tainted money either.
So, Bartiromo asks, “How does it feel to be ostracized?”
Shkreli then launches into a schpiel about how Turing, his price-gouging pharmaceutical company, develops drugs other companies have no interest in because the market isn’t big enough, how Turing needs profits and revenues to fund R&D for other life-saving drugs, and how they care about “every single one” of their patients.
Oh, and when he hikes up his drug prices, Shkreli’s not actually gouging people, he’s gouging the U.S. government and insurance companies…Which makes it perfectly okay, apparently. Jeez, no wonder our insurance premiums keep going up as more and more doctors refuse to accept Medicaid because it doesn’t pay enough.
Shkreli then tells Bartiromo he was going to start a Democratic super PAC. But since Bernie Sanders and his fellow Democrats just don’t get pharmaceuticals or the economy, he’s gonna take his big balls of cash and go home. When Bartiromo asks who he plans to support, Shkreli responds:
“I haven’t made a decision yet. I’d be willing to support a Democrat. In fact, I was going to start a Democratic super PAC with my own money. But after this backlash and the lack of understanding of our economy from what I’ve seen of the Democrats, I may support a Republican now.”
Bernie Sanders Does Understand How The Economy And The Pharmaceuticals Industry Work. He Just Doesn’t Like It.
What Shkreli doesn’t get is that Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have a perfect understanding of how the economy and the pharmaceutical industry work. They just don’t like it. Shkreli sees himself as virtuous because he donates to charities and his company develops life-saving drugs. But Sanders and Clinton believe health care and access to life-saving pharmaceuticals are basic human rights that shouldn’t depend on a company’s profits.
Furthermore, Sanders questions a so-called free market that rewards the Shkrelis of this world with billions of dollars for moving money around, while the people who actually do things that are useful and necessary don’t even make enough to pay their rent.
Here’s the video:
