Bernie Sanders is quite the inspirational figure these days.
He inspires activists at his packed political rallies. He inspires pitch-perfect impressions on late night sketch comedy shows. And, if you’re Martin Shkreli, the much-reviled price-gouging CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Bernie’s rejection of your $2,700 donation (and subsequent re-gifting of that amount to a Washington DC health clinic) inspires you to punch a wall in a fit of Hulk smash!-y rage.
...At least, that’s what Shkreli claimed, during a live-tweeted descent into Sanders-inspired anger that ended, he said, with a fractured wrist, and the x-rays to prove it.
According to Gawker, Shkreli’s rage was ignited after learning that the Sanders camp not only rejected his money, but had used the attempted campaign donation in a recent fundraising email to supporters. Shkreli, who himself had previously voiced support for Sanders, blasted the candidate in a series of tweets:
How angry was he?
True to his word, one hour later:
Seems pretty cut and dry, right?
-- Get mad.
-- Threaten to punch a wall.
-- Actually punch the aforementioned wall.
-- Suffer the consequences.
Not so fast. Almost immediately after tweeting a picture of his “fractured wrist,” people on twitter began calling Shkreli out for faking the image, linking to sites like Medscape and Medpic, both of which featured suspiciously similar looking x-rays. The only difference? Martin Shkreli’s information in the bottom corner.
At first, Shkreli seemed unfazed by the accusations:
He even went so far as to blast some on twitter (and there were a good number of them) who were having a laugh at his expense:
But then, just hours after originally tweeting about his fractured wrist, Shkreli posted the following, decidedly healthy-looking picture:
Wait a sec, were we all just played? After a brief interlude during which he discussed the finer points of guitar shredding, Shkreli retweeted a pair of messages claiming the CEO had been trolling his followers, all along.
So, what gives? Did Shkreli:
1) Masterfully whipped a Twitter field already eager to see him as the villain into a schadenfreud-ish frenzy, only to pull back the curtain on his grand trolling scheme at the last minute, thereby cementing his role as both reviled pharmaceutical CEO and genius performance artist?
2) Fake an injury to garner attention/sympathy, only to backtrack after internet sleuths discovered the subterfuge?
3) Actually punch a wall, fracture his wrist, and decide to play some tunes on his guitar, regardless?
Whatever the case may be, the entire episode has once again put Shkreli back in the spotlight where, hopefully, he’ll finally make good on his promise to lower the price on his company’s medication once and for all.
