Monday night, Donald Trump Jr. attempted to justify his father’s draconian immigration policies with this tweet:
This image says it all. Let's end the politically correct agenda that doesn't put America first. #trump2016 pic.twitter.com/9fHwog7ssN
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 19, 2016
Skittles do not kill people and neither have refugees
Donald Trump Jr.’s tweet shows a bowl or, perhaps, a hundred or so Skittles and claims that “just three” would kill you.
The reality is that there have been 784,000 refugees who have come to the United States since September 11, 2001. None have participated in a domestic terrorist attack.
784,000 Skittles would fill up 25.7 cubic feet.
So the actual analogy is filling this entire refrigerator, including the freezer, to the brim with Skittles. None of the Skittles will kill you.
Just five out of 784,000 have been arrested on terrorism-related charges. That is 0.0006%. None of those five killed any Americans or were even planning credible domestic terrorist attacks.
One reason is that refugees are screened through a rigorous vetting process that can take years.
Refugees are not Skittles
Donald Trump Jr.’s tweet has an even more basic problem than math: refugees are people, not Skittles.
These aren't Skittles, @DonaldJTrumpJr. pic.twitter.com/h8DXvdFtVM
— Jason Sparks (@sparksjls) September 20, 2016
Skittles, for what it’s worth, agrees.
— Mars, Incorporated (@MarsGlobal) September 20, 2016
Stealing candy from a bigot
Donald Trump Jr.’s tweet is not only inaccurate and dehumanizing, it’s also stolen.
Former Representative Joe Walsh tweeted the exact same thing analogy in August. Trump stole it, branded it with the Trump/Pence logo and tweeted it out.
If I had a bowl of Skittles and told you 3 of them would kill you:
Would you eat a handful?
No?
This is our refugee problem.
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) August 13, 2016
Walsh’s radio show was canceled after he used racial slurs on air.
Taste the rainbow of anti-semitism
Trump’s tweet is a variation of a flawed analogy that has been circulating around far-right circles for years.
But, as Raw Story notes, the basic analogy dates back even further. A similar story is told in “Der Giftpilz, an anti-Semitic children’s book” published in 1938. An excerpt of a translation:
Look, Franz, human beings in this world are like the mushrooms in the forest. There are good mushrooms and there are good people. There are poisonous, bad mushrooms and there are bad people. And we have to be on our guard against bad people just as we have to be on guard against poisonous mushrooms. Do you understand that?…
Yes, my child! Just as a single poisonous mushrooms can kill a whole family, so a solitary Jew can destroy a whole village, a whole city, even an entire Volk.
The author, Julius Streicher, was executed as a war criminal in 1946.
Laurel Raymond contributed to this post.
