In a striking convergence of celebrity, commerce, and political discourse, President Donald J. Trump recently offered his public endorsement of actress Sydney Sweeney, whose appearance in a new American Eagle advertising campaign has sparked considerable online debate. The President’s comments came in response to reports that Sweeney is a registered Republican, transforming a discussion about a denim advertisement into a broader political skirmish.
The American Eagle campaign, titled “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” prominently features the Emmy-nominated actress. Central to the campaign’s controversial nature is a tagline that plays on the homophones “genes” and “jeans,” with Sweeney at one point stating, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”
Upon its release in July, the campaign elicited a swift and varied reaction across social media platforms. Critics argued that the wordplay, coupled with Sweeney’s blonde hair and blue eyes, evoked rhetoric associated with eugenics-era slogans, implying racial undertones and promoting a white nationalist message of genetic superiority. Others, however, perceived the campaign as a lighthearted marketing gimmick or even praised it for pushing back against what they termed “woke” advertising.
American Eagle, the brand behind the campaign, quickly responded to the burgeoning backlash. The company issued a statement defending its creative intent, asserting that “‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story.” The statement further affirmed the brand’s commitment to celebrating inclusivity, adding, “We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”
The controversy intensified as reports surfaced regarding Sweeney’s political affiliation. Public voter records indicated that the actress registered with the Republican Party of Florida in Monroe County in June 2024. This revelation provided a new lens through which the ad campaign was viewed, especially within conservative circles.
Sweeney herself had previously faced scrutiny related to her family’s political leanings in 2022. Photographs shared by her brother, Trent Sweeney, from their mother’s 60th birthday party showed guests wearing MAGA-style hats and “Blue Lives Matter” tops.
At the time, Sweeney sought to mitigate the criticism, characterizing the reaction as “wild.” She posted on X, stating, “An innocent celebration for my moms milestone 60th birthday has turned into an absurd political statement, which was not the intention. Please stop making assumptions.”
In a subsequent interview in 2023, when asked about the matter, Sweeney conveyed a sense of resignation. She noted, “Honestly, I feel like nothing I say can help the conversation.” She further elaborated that the situation had “been turning into a wildfire, and nothing I can say will take it back to the correct track.
President Trump’s direct intervention in the discourse further amplified the campaign’s political dimension. On Sunday, when asked by a reporter about his thoughts on Sweeney’s reported Republican registration, Trump responded positively, stating, “She’s a registered Republican? Oh, now I love her ad.”
He continued, “You’d be surprised at how many people are Republicans. That’s what I wouldn’t have known, but I’m glad you told me that. If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic.”
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Following these initial remarks, President Trump extended his support on Truth Social on Monday. He posted, “Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there.” He added, “It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying off the shelves.’ Go get ’em Sydney!”
In the same post, Trump drew comparisons to other public figures and brands he deemed “woke.” He criticized Jaguar for “a stupid, and seriously WOKE advertisement” and referenced singer Taylor Swift, stating, “She was booed out of the Super Bowl and became, NO LONGER HOT.” Trump concluded his post by declaring, “The tide has seriously turned — Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be.
The President’s comments arrived at a critical juncture in the broader political landscape, particularly concerning the upcoming 2024 election. Polling data suggests a competitive, if not challenging, environment for the Democratic Party.
CNN’s poll of polls currently assigns Trump a nearly 70 percent chance of winning the 2024 election, with precise figures cited as 68.4% for Trump versus Kamala Harris’s 30.9%. This electoral projection underscores a perceived momentum for the former president.
Furthermore, electoral college simulations, factoring in a similar polling discrepancy as observed in 2020, predict a significant victory for Donald Trump, projecting 312 electoral votes. Such analyses suggest that even a narrow lead for the Democratic ticket might not be sufficient.
The political calculus from the 2020 election provides a stark reminder of the close margins. Joe Biden secured victory by a slender margin, winning Pennsylvania by only 80,000 votes, indicating that his success was not a landslide. In that election, Trump required merely 46,000 additional votes to secure re-election.
Against this backdrop, the current political standing of Vice President Kamala Harris raises concerns among strategists. She has not achieved the significant lead that some believe is necessary to counter the underestimated Trump vote, with her lead over Trump noted as only two to three points.
A glaring issue highlighted by the polling data is Kamala Harris’s underperformance among traditional Democratic voter constituencies. She is described as “woefully underwater with union voters,” with projections suggesting she might be the worst-performing Democrat in a generation among this group.
Her performance among Black and Jewish voters also shows significant underperformance. While she may exhibit marginal improvements over President Biden in certain crosstabs, analysts contend that “having a pulse isn’t a high benchmark” for success in these vital demographic segments.
The confluence of these political dynamics and the Sydney Sweeney controversy offers the Republican Party a familiar and potent line of attack on well-established culture war grounds. The American Eagle ad, intentionally or not, provided an ambiguous enough narrative to be deniable by its creators, yet clear enough to be interpreted in a way that fuels partisan divisions.
This ambiguity allows the political right to characterize those criticizing the ad as “out-of-touch and cancel-hungry.” Vice President JD Vance exemplified this approach, stating, “My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi. That appears to be their actual strategy.”
Vance further mocked the reaction from the left, noting, “It actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems though, which is that you have a normal all-American beautiful girl doing like a normal jeans ad.” He expressed disbelief at how unhinged some had become over it.
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The culture war framework also sees a dynamic where a “small handful of individuals on the left” or “a handful of liberals questioning the Sweeney ad on Tik Tok” are appointed as de facto representatives for the entire Democratic Party. If their comments go viral, “large portions of the media and the entirety of the right wing expect every rank-and-file Democrat to answer for that one person.
This accountability, according to some analyses, is disproportionately applied. It is argued that this “dynamic does not appear to exist for the right and Republicans, who seem uninhibited to go around burning and pillaging anything that even remotely offends conservative ideologues.”
This perceived double standard is underscored by past incidents, such as the intense conservative backlash against Bud Light in 2023 following its collaboration with a trans influencer, Dylan Mulvaney. That incident led to a mass boycott, which “threatened Anheuser-Busch’s existence as a company.”
The Bud Light controversy saw “myriad videos from right wingers popped up online with influencers and celebrities alike using firearms to shoot at Bud Light cans.” This was described as “the childish political meltdown to end all childish political meltdowns.”
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Yet, in the aftermath of the Bud Light situation, there were no widespread demands for Republicans to disavow the violent aspects of the backlash. While then-President Biden condemned bomb threats against the company, Republicans reportedly defended the fervent reaction.
The perceived lack of symmetrical accountability is a recurring theme. The current situation, where “a couple of social liberals and lefties making media posts calling out this ad and a Columbia University professor analyzing it for eugenic language on TikTok” is spun into a “legitimate political problem for Democrats,” highlights this asymmetry.
Critics of this dynamic articulate a weariness with what they term “cancel-culture propaganda.” They argue that “anyone who takes a handful of lefty social media posts and spins them into some grand problem with the entire left and the Democratic Party is not working in good faith.
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Such observers lament the pervasive notion “that only Democrats have agency to respond and tamp down on their own base” while simultaneously being held “answerable for every stray comment some vaguely left-coded person makes.”
Beyond the political machinations, the American Eagle campaign has also yielded significant commercial attention. Since Trump began discussing the advertisement, the company’s stock has notably risen, reportedly by as much as 20 percent.
Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce, commented on the campaign’s effectiveness, stating American Eagle “nailed” the ad. He emphasized that in contemporary marketing, getting consumers to share advertisements is exponentially more challenging.
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Adamson noted that ads must be “extraordinary” to be shared, whether “extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad.” He estimated that the social media buzz generated by the American Eagle advertisement is worth “10 or 20 times what the company spent on making it.
The entanglement of a celebrity endorsement, a marketing campaign, and high-stakes political narratives illustrates the complex and often unpredictable nature of public discourse in the digital age. The Sydney Sweeney ad, initially a commercial endeavor, has seamlessly transitioned into a powerful symbol within a broader cultural and political struggle.
This episode serves as a potent reminder of how readily seemingly apolitical events can be co-opted and reframed within the ongoing American culture wars. It highlights the strategic exploitation of online reactions to paint ideological opponents in specific lights, often irrespective of the initial intent or broader context.
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The unfolding narrative around Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle is more than just an advertisement; it is a microcosm of the current political moment, where every cultural touchpoint can become a battleground. It reflects a society grappling with deeply entrenched divisions, where perceptions of “wokeness” and traditional values clash, shaping not only public opinion but potentially the very fabric of the nation’s political future.
