Mr Trump senior has sparked waves of criticism with his comments on race, immigrants and refugees, including calling for a ban on Muslim travellers to the United States.The brash businessman is also strongly opposed to plans by President Barack Obama to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S. by the end of this month.
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The Mars company, which makes Skittles, won praise Tuesday for its response to a tweet from Donald Trump Jr. that dragged its signature colorful sweets into the political fray. “Would you take a handful?” the tweet’s graphic says, “That’s our Syrian refugee problem”.
“I’m really really appalled by having my image, you know, on Twitter used against the refugees”, said David Kittos, 48.
When UK-based photographer David Kittos posted a photo of Skittles to Flickr in January 2010, he didn’t know it would spark a US presidential campaign controversy six years later. “They could have just bought a cheap image from a micro stock library”, Kittos said.
Trump Jr.’s tweet prompted a barrage of angry responses on Twitter. This is pure greed from them.
Wringley, the company that owns Skittles spoke out against the message by saying “Skittles are candy”.
Now, it turns out the images was taken by a Cypriot-born man who fled to Britain in 1974 from the Turkish occupation of the Mediterranean island. I don’t think they care about my feelings. “They should not be stealing an image full stop”, Kittos said.
While devoted fans of Trump approved of the tweet, a large number of users across the social media platform, including the producer of Skittles, criticized Trump Jr. for his tweet.
Donald Trump Jr. speaks at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio on Tuesday, July 19, 2016.
The former USA secretary of state has not updated that figure in recent months but says all refugees should be vetted.
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For the bulk of his campaign, Trump had proposed an outright ban on Muslim immigrants and Syrian refugees. “We respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing”. The odds of being killed by a refugee in a terrorist attack are about 1 in more than 3.6 billion, according to a recent Cato Institute study.
