Stephen Colbert explains everything that's wrong with Trump Jr.'s Skittles meme

Stephen Colbert explains Skittles and refugees to Donald Trump Jr.
(Image credit: Late Show)

On Monday night, Donald Trump Jr. — adviser to and eldest son of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump — tweeted an image comparing refugees to poison Skittles, drawing protests from the company that makes Skittles and the refugee who snapped the photo in the meme, and outrage from lots of other people. On Tuesday, Donald Trump's running mate Gov. Mike Pence said he did not understand all the "outrage about a metaphor used by Don Jr.," and on Tuesday's Late Show, Stephen Colbert counted the ways. "That's a powerful metaphor," he began. "It really makes me reconsider my stance on eating Syrian refugees."

Colbert started with the grammar in the image, especially, "If I told you that just three would kill you." "That's not right," he said. "As in, if you think that's a complete sentence, you've got your head up your." "But "also, it turns out the math is wrong," Colbert said. The odds of being killed by a refugee in the U.S. has been calculated at 1 in 3.64 billion, "so that's not three poison Skittles in a bowl, that's three poison Skittles in one and a half Olympic-size swimming pools of Skittles — and yes, for the record, I would eat all of them."

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.