Skittles Shuts Down Donald Trump Jr.'s Meme Attempt

Donald Trump Jr. probably won't be getting promoted to Chief Meme Creator for his father's campaign anytime soon: After tweeting a graphic that compared Syrian refugees to Skittles, the Son of Donald had his metaphor swiftly shut down, with even the candy company firing back.

The meme tweeted by Trump II last night featured a bowl of the rainbow-colored candies and read, "If I had a bowl of Skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful? That's our Syrian refugee problem."

There are numerous problems with this meme: Number one, don't take candy from strangers, especially when they look like Donald Trump Jr.

Second, as Mashable points out, the tweet is "mathematically inaccurate," and grossly so: Assuming the bowl pictured in the meme holds around 160 Skittles, that would imply there's roughly a 1-in-50 chance of being killed by a poisoned Skittle. Conversely, a new study from the CATO Institute indicates the chance of being killed by a refugee terrorist in the U.S. is around 1 in 3.5 billion.

Further, the dicey metaphor wasn't even an original idea: It was ripped off from a statement tweeted last month by former Congressman Joe Walsh, who apparently stole it from a meme that compared Syrian refugees to M&Ms, which was actually based off a feminist meme from 2014 that had zero to do with refugees. (Whew.)

And Skittles' manufacturer, Wrigley, was none too enthusiastic about being used as a political pawn by the Trump campaign, releasing a pithy statement to express its disapproval that began, "Skittles are candy. Refugees are people."

Perhaps the Trumps should stick to tweeting about taco bowls.

• This Is Why Donald Trump Jr.'s Skittles Meme Makes No Sense [Mashable]
• All Donald Trump Coverage [E]