Donald Trump Jr. compares Syrian refugees to poisoned Skittles
Donald Trump's appearance on Monday in Estero, Fla., got eclipsed by comments made by his son, Donald Trump Jr., about Syrian refugees.
Tweeting an image with the "Make America Great Again" logo, he compared Syrian refugees to poisoned Skittles. The caption reads: "The image says it all. Let's end the politically correct agenda that doesn't put America first."
The message echoes the elder Trump's comments about curbing immigration to the United States, including tactics such as immigration bans from "compromised" nations. Trump also came down hard on Clinton when she supported accepting thousands of more refugees into the country.
The U.S. accepted its 10,000th Syrian refugee in late August and plans to accept at least 110,000 more refugees in the fiscal year 2017, a White House official said.
Also worth noting, Obama plans to convene a Refugee Summit on Tuesday involving leaders from Canada, Ethiopia, Germany, Jordan, Mexico and Sweden. His goal? To secure agreements for food aid and to double the number of refugees resettled in third countries each year.
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U.S. has accepted 10,000th Syrian refugee, White House says
The younger Trump's tweet didn't go over well. Dozens of people, if not more, jumped into the younger Trump's mentions, blasting him for trivializing the plight of the refugees and promoting racial profiling.
Thousands more hammered Trump for his Skittles analogy, making it a trending topic on Twitter (with 89,000 tweets and counting):
Some noted the precarious position in which this has put the @Skittles social media manager, while a number of left-leaning Twitter users asked the company to intervene in support of the refugees:
Denise Young, spokeswoman for Skittles, told USA TODAY in a statement "Skittles are candy. Refugees are people. We don’t feel it’s an appropriate analogy."
The company will not comment further, she added, "as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing."
On Tuesday Gov. Mike Pence backed the comments in an interview with NBC, saying that the level of outrage surprised him.
"Well, it is remarkable to me to see the level of outrage about a metaphor used by Don Jr., when Hillary Clinton’s calling for a 550% increase in the Syrian refugee program, all the while out FBI and our public safety officials tell us that we can’t know for sure who those people are coming into this country," the Republican vice-presidential nominee said.
And the campaign stood behind Trump's son as welt, saying that "speaking the truth might upset those who would rather be politically correct than safe,"
"But the American people want a change, and only Donald Trump will do what's needed to protect us," spokesman Jason Miller continued in a statement.
As Americans may remember, this is not the first time the colorful candies were thrust into the national spotlight over a serious, political debate.
Trayvon Martin, 17, had left his father's house to go to the store the night of Feb. 26, 2012, and bought a bag of Skittles and an Arizona watermelon-flavored drink when he was confronted by a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman. After Zimmerman shot and killed Martin during a scuffle, those calling for the volunteer's prosecution and conviction often described Martin as an innocent black boy armed with nothing but a hooded sweatshirt and a bag of Skittles.
But the analogy in reference to Syrian refugees isn't new either.