Photo: Michael Hickey/ Getty Images.

Wrigley, maker of the rainbow candy Skittles, has issued a withering response to a question from a reporter about a viral Twitter post from Donald Trump Jr which likened refugees to poisoned Skittles.

The company told Seth Abramovitch of the Hollywood Reporter:

Hi Seth, Thanks for reaching out. Here is our response. Skittles are candy. Refugees are people. We don’t feel like it’s an appropriate analogy. We will respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing. Denis Young

VP of Corporate Affairs, Wrigley Americas

It follows the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s son’s tweet which likened Syrian refugees to Skittles.

“This image says it all. Let’s end the politically correct agenda that doesn’t put America first. #trump2016,” he tweeted, with a graphic that said: “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.”

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

Trump Jr.’s Skittles reference is a borrowed from an analogy that gained popularity two years ago, as discussed on Reddit and this blog.

That analogy goes: “Imagine a bowl of M&Ms. 10% of them are poisoned. Go ahead. Eat a handful. Not all M&Ms are poison.”

As the author of the Debunking Denialism post puts it:

The general idea is that the overgeneralizing [a group] and treating them all as suspect is just as valid as not wanting to eat an M&M from a bowl were some of them are poisonous. This may seem reasonable at first, but it quickly becomes apparent that this is merely an intuition pump designed to automatically dismiss criticisms about flawed generalizations without due consideration.

Here’s more on why the poisonous M&Ms analogy is flawed.

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