Not only has the company that makes the fruit-flavoured sweets hit back, but in an ironic twist the photographer who took the photo Trump Jr. tweeted was himself a refugee.
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In a Monday tweet, Donald Trump Jr. railed against the United States immigration system, contending it had been stunted by political correctness.
Others referenced the horrific photo of dead refugee toddler Aylan Kurdi, whose washed up body become the defining image of the Syrian refugee crisis in September 2015.
Hey Donald Trump Jr., the next time you tweet a wildly inaccurate anti-refugee graphic, don’t swipe the work of an actual former refugee in the process.
“Skittles are candy. Refugees are people”, said spokeswoman Michelle Green, adding that the Mars Inc subsidiary would refrain from further comment, “as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing”.
Trump has made screening, and in some cases outright barring, immigrants and refugees from entering the county a wedge issue in this year’s presidential campaign.
The brash businessman also is strongly opposed to plans by President Barack Obama to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees into the USA by the end of this month.
“Thankful my grandfather was allowed into this country and not compared to a poisonous skittle”, Josh Schwerin, a national spokesman for Clinton, posted on Monday. “So I would never approve the use of this image against refugees”. Clinton said she would continue with the vetting now in place, an effort that can take multiple years to complete.
Pence told MSNBC in an interview Tuesday that the younger Trump was simply using a “metaphor”. “Refugees are people. We don’t feel it’s an appropriate analogy”.
“What he was doing was making an illustration”.
The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on Pence’s remarks. I don’t think they care about my feelings.
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As of Tuesday morning, the candy continued to triumph in the spotlight and the hashtag #SkittlesWelcome – full of more tweets refuting the comparison – began trending on Twitter.
