[vixen99]

As for the donation, who is going to disagree with the idea of getting money out of bad hands and into good ones. What do you want to do otherwise, burn it? And that's got nothing to do with removing the Escobars of this world.

[ghostbrainalpha]

Plenty of people have issues with taking money from bad people.

Why did Bernie Sanders have to return Martin Shkreli's donation? Even if the donation doesn't buy any influence or soft power it allows the "bad" actor to clean their reputation.

[dagw]

Why did Bernie Sanders have to return Martin Shkreli's donation?

From a political perspective there is also the reputation cost to consider. Even if you're morally fine with taking "bad" peoples money, having to answer "why is Shkreli funding you campaign" all the time has a pretty big political cost, even if you have a perfectly legitimate answer.