In episode 36 of his newest production, “Tucker on X,” host Tucker Carlson interviewed Martin Shkreli, a former pharmaceutical executive known for raising the price of Daraprim, a drug that treats a parasitic infection, by 5,000 percent.
Ep. 36 What happens when you give Hillary Clinton the finger? Ask Martin Shkreli. He did four and a half years in prison. That may be why Sam Bankman-Fried just asked his advice on doing time. pic.twitter.com/vMGiqDk4tR
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 6, 2023
Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud and now remains on supervised release after serving four and a half years behind bars.
Shkreli was branded as “the most hated man in America” by many mainstream media outlets.
During his hour-long interview with Carlson, Shkreli said he believes he was targeted by the media for a couple of different reasons, with one being his overall pro-capitalist personality as a CEO.
“A few different dynamics are at play,” Shkreli said. “The first is that CEOs are not allowed to have personalities anymore. You know, and I think you see the handful that do: the Elons and you know, others, they get criticized routinely for their personalities. And what corporate America and what boards want to see is a CEO that’s just completely impervious to attack. I think that when you have a personality that’s defiant or something that you want to be, you know, a hill you’re willing to die on, for me, that hill is capitalism. And it’s our American way of life. And it’s this hill that no politician can tell us businesspeople what our prices should be.”
Shkreli went on to note that the mainstream media chose to single out his company’s “corporate greed” for its decision to raise the price of Daraprim instead of calling out similar actions by billion dollar companies like Johnson & Johnson or Pfizer.
“In fact, Daraprim was one of the least significant things we ever did and it became this, like, big magnifying glass on “corporate greed.” To this day, I’ve never made a dollar from Daraprim,” Shkreli said.
Shkreli said despite the negative media coverage about him, out of the approximately 5,000 letters he received from people while he was in jail, less than 1 percent were hate mail.
“I walk around in New York and people hug me, they take selfies – there’s no hate. You know, that’s a liberal wishful thinking to project on who they want to be the most hated man to be,” he said.
As of press time, the latest installment of Carlson’s video podcast, posted at 4:59 p.m. Central Standard Time on Monday, had over 1.4 million views. The 36 episodes posted by @TuckerCarlson have been seen well over 3 billion times on Twitter / X.
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
