Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rejected a large donation from Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli, the Big Pharma executive who raised the price of a live-saving drug by 5,000 percent.
Shkreli donated $2,700 to the Sanders campaign, the largest amount an individual can donate to a political campaign, in an attempt to coax Sanders into having a discussion about the pharmaceutical industry. Shkreli doesn’t realize that Sanders can’t be bought. Sanders rejected the donation and denied Shkreli’s proposal for a meeting.
“We are not keeping the money from this poster boy for drug company greed,” said Sanders campaign spokesperson Michael Briggs. Instead of keeping the money, the campaign will donate the money to the Whitman-Walker health clinic in Washington. Shkreli took the rejection personally.
“I think it’s cheap to use one person’s action as a platform without kind of talking to that person,” Shkreli said in the interview. “He’ll take my money, but he won’t engage with me for five minutes to understand this issue better.”
Sanders didn’t “take” the money, but gave it to a medical cause. Shkreli is the face of the Big Pharma monster that treats human life like a profit engine.
For more on this story, visit the Boston Globe “Bernie Sanders rejects donation from drug company CEO”
