Donald Trump blasts CEO who raised drug price 5,000 percent: 'He looks like a spoiled brat'

(Image credit: Steve Pope/Getty Images)

last updated 24 September 2015

If Martin Shkreli — the pharmaceutical CEO who faced outrage after raising the price of a life-saving medication from $13.50 a pill to $750 — is looking for solace, he won't find any from Donald Trump.

"He looks like a spoiled brat to me," the Republican presidential frontrunner told reporters in South Carolina on Wednesday. "You want to know the truth? He looks like a spoiled brat." In August, Shkreli's Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the drug Daraprim, which treats taxoplasmosis. A parasitic infection, taxoplasmosis can be fatal for people with weakened immune systems caused by chemotherapy and AIDS. Shkreli said on Monday the price had to go up so the company could "turn a profit," but after backlash from advocacy groups and consumers, he announced Tuesday he changed his mind and would be lowering the cost again over the next few weeks.

That wasn't good enough for Trump, who said Shkreli thought he was "hot stuff" but was actually "zero. He's nothing. He ought to be ashamed of himself." Shkreli was a hedge fund manager before getting into the pharmaceutical business, and Trump has said previously that "hedge fund guys are getting away with murder" and he would do something to change that. "He's a hedge fund guy, who, as you know — the only one that I'm raising taxes on," he said Wednesday. "They are going to be paying up. I thought it was a disgusting thing, what he did. I thought it was a disgrace."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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