Donald Trump’s eldest son posted on social media comparing Syrian refugees to Skittles.
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The maker of Skittles, Wrigley Americas immediately distanced itself from the tweet with a terse response. Although Miller said the Post has “their facts wrong”, the statement did not dispute any facts, nor did it explain how “there was not, and could not be, any intent or motive for the Trump Foundation to make improper payments”. “We don’t feel it’s an appropriate analogy”, Denise Young said. “We will respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing”.
Candidate Donald Trump has opposed letting Syrian refugees enter, while his Democratic rival in the November 8 election, Hillary Clinton, has supported accepting some of those fleeing the war-torn country.
“In 1974, when I was 6 years old, I was a refugee from the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, so I would never approve the use of this image against refugees”, he told the broadcaster. In fact, as Colbert points out, “the Conservative Cato institute did the math and found the odds of an American being killed by a refugee in a terror attack is one in 3.64 billion. that’s not three poisoned Skittles in a bown”.
– Jason Sparks (@sparksjls) September 20, 2016Even if we did bring in a few bad Skittles – and there’s no evidence we do – you take that risk to save these Skittles, you monstrous dope.
Jr.’s tweet suggests that just because there are plenty of peace-loving Muslims in America, there will always be one or two who have extremist ideas, which could lead to acts of terrorism.
Mr Kittos is a keen photographer and told the BBC: “I was just experimenting with something called off-camera flash”.
Kittos said he would not have given Trump Jr. permission to use his photo.
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The Trump campaign responded to a question about the photo with a more general comment on the controversy over the tweet. As the Intercept reports, the Trump campaign’s analogy of a few unsafe people poisoning the entire population can be traced back to Der Giftpilz (The Toadstool), an anti-Semitic children’s book by author Julius Streicher. He has since softened his stance and said he would ban immigration from countries where terrorism is widespread and would introduce an “ideology test” for vetting new immigrants.
