Bernie Sanders Turned Down A Donation From That Drug Price Gouging CEO Martin Shkreli
Mic – In the first Democratic debate of the presidential season, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders counted the pharmaceutical industry and Wall Street as the enemies he was “most proud of.”
On Thursday, the candidate showed supporters and enemies alike that he wasn’t kidding around, rejecting a $2,700 donation, the maximum legal individual contribution, from Martin Shkreli. Shkreli, the hedge funder turned pharmaceutical CEO, became a Democratic bête noire after his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, hiked the price of the lifesaving drug Daraprim by more than 5,000%.
Instead of returning the money to Shkreli, Stat first reported, the Sanders campaign announced that it would donate it to Whitman-Walker Health in Washington. “We are not keeping the money from this poster boy for drug company greed,” campaign spokesman Michael Briggs told Stat.
After an avalanche of public pressure, Shkreli had promised to lower the price of Daraprim from $750 a pill. But as Friday, he has still not done so.
Okay first off: bête noire? Really Mic.com? Even I think that word choice was needlessly pretentious. Dial it back a little.
Secondly, good for Bernie Sanders. He’s kind of an odd guy to get a read on and I’m not sure there’s any way to win an election when you’re casually calling yourself a socialist during a televised debate (regardless of whatever cockamamie way he explains it). But Bernie Sanders is easily the most charming guy of that Democratic group between this and his chill bro support for legalizing marijuana. I’m not going to throw the guy a parade for turning down an easy target’s donation that’s roughly the cost of a pair of Hillary Clinton’s extra sturdy cankle-supporting high heels but it’s kind of refreshing to see someone besides Donald Trump out there calling a spade a spade. I still can’t imagine a world in which I’d vote for the guy but you’ve got to give credit where it’s due and it’s nice to see someone not let that shitbag Martin Shkreli buy his way into good graces. If even politicians are turning down your money, you know you’ve fucked up BAD in life.
Also 100% not a political blog as much as a “Ha fuck that drug price gouging CEO” blog but I have to say, one thing really working against Bernie Sanders is how incredibly unphotogenic he is. Usually when I pull a picture for any blog, I try to make people look nice because I would want someone to do that for me and I had to watch about 10 videos of Bernie to get even that awful screengrab above. Dude straight up looks like a corpse half the time. This was the second best one I could get:
Bernie Sanders: Pure Unadulterated Elderly Jewish Seduction. You just know Bernie loves eating box. Democratic socialist oral for days.