President Donald Trump has publicly complimented actress Sydney Sweeney following an online backlash against one of the ads she stars in. Sydney Sweeney, a Republican, has the HOTTEST ad around,” he posted on Monday to his Truth Social site. “Go get ’em, Sydney!”
The Emmy-nominated actress, who appeared in The White Lotus and Euphoria, features in a jeans ad for American Eagle where she states: “Genes get inherited from parents to kid, usually dictating characteristics such as hair colour, personality and even the colour of the eyes. My jeans are blue.”
Others criticised the 27-year-old blue-eyed actress’s pun in the advert, which raised a storm around race and beauty standards. American Eagle has stood by the advert, stating it is only talking about the company’s jeans.
American Eagle launched the advertising campaign featuring Sweeney on 23 July. The tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” was seen on TV, social media and outside stores. It got almost instant backlash on social media from some.
They lambasted the genes pun in the ad – including one phrase that stated the blue-eyed, blonde-haired actress “has great jeans” – as reminiscent of rhetoric linked with eugenics, the discredited theory that the human race could be improved by selective breeding.
Others, however, defended Sweeney and characterised the outrage as excessive. Later reports also indicated Sweeney is a registered Florida Republican. Not long afterwards, Trump commented about the feud and said he was on the side of the actress, referring to her as a “registered Republican.”
Sweeney herself has thus far refused to comment on the backlash or admit to her political registration. The company averred that the campaign “is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story,” American Eagle added. “We’ll keep on embracing how everyone wears their AE jeans confidently, in their way.”
Since Trump started talking about the ad on Monday, the company stock has skyrocketed and was up as much as 20%. Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consulting firm Metaforce, said American Eagle “nailed” the ad.
“It is infinitely more difficult than it was many years ago,” he explained to the BBC. “Being successful at marketing today is to have consumers posting [advertisements] on social.”
But they need to be “unbelievable” for individuals to post them, “whether that’s incredibly good or incredibly bad,” he indicated. He went on to say that the social media chatter American Eagle is receiving from the ad is worth 10 or 20 times what it cost the company to produce.
Sweeney has been registered as a Republican in Florida since 2024, state records show. She gained attention in 2023 when videos and photos from her mother’s birthday celebration were posted online and depicted some guests wearing Make America Great Again hats.
Sweeney replied and indicated folks should “stop assuming” and making the “innocent celebration” an “absurd political statement.”
Some time later, she was queried about it in an interview: “Honestly, I feel like nothing I say can help the conversation,” she explained to GQ. It’s becoming a wildfire, and nothing that I say will get it back on the right track,” she said.
