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Quick Hit: Donald Trump Jr. doesn’t understand refugees, or Skittles

Caperton

The Trump campaign’s attempts to humanize The Donald via a Twitter campaign by his kids have gotten off to a rocky start. First, there was the “insider vs. outsider” tweet featuring Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr. staring Children-of-the-Corn-like into the camera to tell us that this election isn’t about Republicans versus Democrats, #millennialsfortrump.

Most recently, it’s Junior’s Skittles tweet, which equates Syrian refugees to poisonous Skittles and decries political correctness because yeah, that’s the big problem going around.

I’ve mentioned in the past that advertising is my thing, so I wanted to break the tweet down and examine some of the mistakes Baby Trump made, from a copywriter’s perspective.

A number of problems with Baby Trump’s Skittles post:

1. Skittles is a brand name. Capitalize that bish.

2. Words with a k in them are objectively funnier than words without. “Skittles” undermines a lot of the gravity of your sentiment. (Say it out loud: Skittlz. Skittlz. Skittlz.) Better to just go with generic “candies.”

3. Except that “candies” is even more lighthearted, so you’re really better off finding a better metaphor. (Don’t ask me to do it for you. I’m not getting paid for this.)

4. That Skittles photo was used without the permission of David Kittos, a database developer and amateur photographer in the UK who… also happens to be a refugee.

5. That quote was ganked without attribution from Joe Walsh, the former representative turned conservative radio host, who tweeted it, like, a month ago. (Walsh’s Twitter account was briefly suspended earlier this year because of threatening tweets about President Obama and Black Lives Matter protesters, so maybe be more careful about whose Twitter feed you crib from, Junior.)

6. “I told you that just three would kill you. Would you take a handful?” Of course not. You just implied that the entire bowl is so poisonous that it would only take three of them to kill me. I’m definitely not taking more than two of your poisoned Skittles (Skittlz, Skittlz), you monster.

7. Refugees aren’t Skittles, they’re men, women, and children whose lives have been threatened and loved ones killed and and homes bombed into dust and blood all around them in a war that shows no signs of abating, you contemptible, insular, ignorant, overindulged, xenophobic, subhuman son of a tangerine.

8. See #7.

The image says it all.

8 thoughts on Quick Hit: Donald Trump Jr. doesn’t understand refugees, or Skittles

  2. “The fact that ‘there are only a handful of bad cops’ cuts no ice with me. If ‘only a handful of McDonald’s are spitting in your food,’ you’re not going to McDonald’s.” (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

    Same principle, stated better. Note that Christian and secular countries are ovewhelmingly taking in refugees, not Muslim nations with the exceptions of those adjacent to conflict.

    Old rental property managers know to be suspicious when a prospective tenant is brought in by a family member who is paying rent and deposit for tenant. They’re dumping trouble on you.

    I’ll take Coates over candyass any day. The comparisons to WWII Jewish refugees ignore the fact that Jews are almost never terrorists. Saudi Arabia and Dubai, among others, have plenty of financial resources for relocation.

  4. I’ve seen this metaphor used by radfems about men, white supremacists about blacks, and now trump about Syrian refugees. My eyes rolled then, and they roll now.

  5. One of the most annoying logical fallacies is the anecdote/analogy. Anecdotes and analogies can be great for explaining what you mean and helping others understand, but they don’t even come close to proving that what you’re saying is right. Don’t agree with me? Just think of how a tree grows….

  6. The presence of social scripts is heavy in Donald Trumps perspective of society. As when he compared immigrants to a few poisoned skittles out of the majority. And unfortunately, these are negative social scripts. Whether he says certain things to get a rise out of people, or to agree with their deepest fears, he is stating social scripts. These scripts act as stories or manuals for how society “should” work when it should not and does not have to be that way. The only reason so many people are agreeing with Trump is solely because his use of social scripts, and if these scripts are ideas that have been with humanity for so long and serve as a guideline for us, then of course people will agree with him and then vote for him. It needs to be realized that when Trump states a script such as

  7. “All immigrants take our jobs and are creating poverty and are therefore bad to our nation” that this is nothing more than a common misconception held by so many. Poverty is not created by individuals, its made by the unequal access to resources. The poor are not poor because they choose to be, they endure hardships and as a result of being treated with inequality, such as the lesser pay of a woman, they do not have the resources that others have access to. Just because these social scripts exist does not mean they are true. We must, as a society, take time and carefully understand and acknowledge comments, statements and even actions by others to see this is not the way things should be, and that they do not have to be that way. Even without the use of social scripts, one can clearly see

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