On Tuesday (20 September), Donald Trump’s eldest son posted on social media comparing Syrian refugees to Skittles.

No, you’re not having a nightmare. This actually happened. Welcome to 2016.

Posting an image of a bowl of Skittles, Trump Jr wrote: "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."

He captioned the post with: "This image says it all. Let's end the politically correct agenda that doesn't put America first."

As you might have guessed, comparing refugees to fruity sweets didn’t go down ‘that well’, with the comments receiving widespread condemnation on social media:

But the story doesn’t end there. Skittles themselves issued a response (the company, not the sweets, ofc) to Donald Trump Jr’s comments in an email to Seth Abramovitch, a senior reporter at The Hollywood Reporter:

Now that’s pretty remarkable. Didn’t think 2016 could get any more insane? Well the photographer who owns the rights to the bowl of skittles tweeted out by Donald Trump Jr. then waded in with his thoughts too.

David Kittos, based in the UK, emailed Buzzfeed News to say “I believe that the picture was lifted from my Flickr account WITHOUT permission. I don’t approve of its use by Mr. Trump or his politics.”

Trump (Senior, yes, it’s confusing because they’re all atrocious) has previously called for a ban on Muslim immigration to the US and on resettling refugees from the Syrian war, most recently attempting to tie a bombing in New York City to the refugee crisis.

Donald Trump even suggested that Mexico would pay "100%" for a border wall between the two countries, and that deporting "criminal aliens" was a priority of his. It sounds unbelievable, but then the UK is funding the construction (which started yesterday) of a £2 million wall in Calais to keep out refugees. For more on that awful story, read ourexplainer here.

Trumps Junior and Senior have also repeatedly tweeted and retweeted questionable (at best) material, including comments from white supremacists and neo-Nazis. So this isn’t really unexpected behaviour, but it’s still a pretty poor reflection on their ability to lead and inspire a diverse country.

2016, everyone.

What do you think? Let us know over @MTVUK.