President Trump crowed about actress Sydney Sweeney’s controversial American Eagle Outfitters jeans ad once he learned she is apparently a Republican.
“She’s a registered Republican?!” an astonished Trump exclaimed on Sunday evening when a reporter asked for his reaction to reports that Sweeney had registered with the party in Florida in June 2024. “Oh — now I love her ad! If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic.”
By Monday it had become “the HOTTEST ad out there,” as Trump continued to gush on Truth Social, which sent American Eagle stock surging by 15%, CNBC reported. The Monday morning post then morphed into an indictment against the “woke,” ranging from the “no longer hot” Taylor Swift, to Jaguar’s ill-fated 2024 ad campaign. “Being woke is for losers,” Trump concluded. “Being Republican is what you want to be.”
The “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” campaign launched on July 23, delivering the “clever, even provocative language” that Chief Marketing Officer Craig Brommers had promised was “definitely going to push buttons.” Sweeney, wearing the slouchy jeans amid a variety of settings, will adorn 3D billboards in Times Square and elsewhere, and take to Snapchat and Instagram to speak with users.
The blonde-haired, blue-eyed actress’s declaration that “I have good jeans,” while showing off a pair of American Eagle flared denims, triggered a debate about race and Western beauty standards. The campaign’s interchangeable use of the words “jeans” and “genes” to hammer home the pun helped fuel the backlash with what some critics saw as a veiled reference to eugenics, a discredited gene-manipulation theory embraced by Adolf Hitler and Germany’s Nazi Party.
American Eagle said Saturday that the ad campaign “is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story. Great jeans look good on everyone.”
On Sunday the president, ever on the lookout for those he perceives as loyalists, said there are probably many more people like Sweeney.
“You’d be surprised at how many people are Republicans,” he said while chatting with reporters on live television in Pennsylvania. “That’s one I wouldn’t have known, but I’m glad you told me that.”
With News Wire Services
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