I'm surprised, it does seem that this is true. I read a lot of articles where he announced that people could apply for medication, or medicaid would pay $0.01 per pill. I couldn't find anything about where to apply or one people who have applied and been able to get this medication, but there is already a generic alternative, so this program might be dead in the water.

As for smear campaign, I'm not so sure. Everytime I read quotes from him, it seems he just really likes to play the "bad boy". Maybe he just wants people to think pharmaceutical companies are scumbags, so when he ran one he purposefully made himself look bad. Shkreli definitely didn't seem to care that people got a bad impression of him.