In a single tweet, Donald Trump Jr. reduced 4.8 million suffering refugees to Skittles—but the candy-maker isn’t having it.
Yesterday, Sept. 19, the son and political advisor of the US Republican party’s presidential candidate tweeted:
Syrian refugees have been forced to uproot their families, from a country that’s morphed into a battleground between global superpowers and fringe terrorist groups. In the wake of the current refugee crisis—the largest in recent history—the US and Europe have grappled with how to respond. Many believe the world’s more secure nations have an obligation to shelter refugees, while others would turn them away.
Skittles’ parent company, Wrigley Americas, was quick to swoop in and disavow any connection to Trump Jr.’s apparent stance on the issue.
“Skittles are candy. Refugees are people,” said Wrigley’s vice president of corporate affairs, Denise Young. ”We don’t feel it’s an appropriate analogy. We will respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing.”
Of course, Skittles aren’t the first food-related item to be dragged into the 2016 election cycle.
And don’t forget the meme that bubbled into the public consciousness after the founder of Latinos for Trump, Marco Gutierrez, claimed that if undocumented immigrant issues weren’t dealt with, the US would have “taco trucks on every corner.”
That’s now spiraled off into being a meme of it’s own.