President Trump has praised Sydney Sweeney for starring in the “hottest” commercial and said “being woke is for losers” after the actress was identified as a registered Republican in Florida.
Sweeney, 27, is the poster girl for an American Eagle jeans campaign that has sparked days of debate about traditional beauty standards.
Trump compared the advertising campaign favourably with the recent Jaguar rebrand, which he described as a “seriously woke advertisement” and a “total disaster”.
“Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘hottest’ ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying of the shelves’. Go get ‘em Sydney!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
In the same post, Trump also criticised the “woke singer” Taylor Swift, having previously clashed with the 35-year-old when she endorsed Kamala Harris at last year’s election. He said: “Ever since I alerted the world as to what she was by saying on TRUTH that I can’t stand her (HATE!). She was booed out of the Super Bowl and became NO LONGER HOT. The tide has seriously turned — Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
A public database in Florida’s Monroe county shows Sweeney, who has starred in the TV series Euphoria, The White Lotus and the romcom Anyone But You, was registered there as a Republican voter last June, only weeks after Trump was convicted in New York of criminal falsification of business records in the run-up to last year’s election.
Trump’s reaction to Sydney Sweeney’s Republican news
Her registration was discovered by a YouTuber who said she came across it while putting together a profile of Sweeney.
• Megan Agnew interviews Sydney Sweeney: ‘I have to prove myself as a young woman’
The campaign features a reclining Sweeney, raising her midriff to zip up her jeans while declaring that “genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality and even eye colour”. Turning to stare into the camera, she says: “My jeans are blue.”
This and other advertising spots featuring the same pun were received in some corners of the internet as a “eugenicist dog-whistle” implying the genes of a blonde, white woman were superior to others’. This, in turn, was seized on by conservative commentators as proof of extremism on the American left.
Stephen Cheung, the White House communications director, called it “cancel culture run amok” and added: “This warped, moronic and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024. They’re tired of this bullshit.”
On the conservative podcast Ruthless, JD Vance, the vice-president, said his “advice” to Democrats would be “continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive a Nazi”. He added: “You have a normal, all-American, beautiful girl doing, like, a normal jeans ad … and they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing.”
Sweeney attending a special screening of her latest film, Americana, in LA on Sunday night
JOHN SALANGSANG/SHUTTERSTOCK
Informed of Sweeney’s party affiliation as he flew back to Washington from New Jersey on board Air Force One on Sunday night, Trump said that “you’d be surprised at how many people are Republican”. He added: “I’m glad you told me that. If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic.”
The podcaster Megyn Kelly claimed the advertisement marked a turning point in the presentation of beauty. “We have been suffering with the elevation of homely people in our fashion ads and our fitness ads for years now and we are over it,” she said. “We miss attractive people. We are sick of trying to pretend that these objectively unattractive people are the new beauty standard. They are not.”
The campaign has generated controversy but American Eagle insists there is no political subtext
MICHAEL M SANTIAGO/GETTY IMAGES
American Eagle said the advertisement was simply about jeans, saying: “Great jeans look good on everyone.”
• Aliza Licht: Sydney Sweeney ad proves brands can be sexy again
Sweeney has not responded to the controversy. It is not the first time she has become the apparently unwitting focus of an argument about her political affiliation. In 2022 she threw a party for her mother’s 60th birthday in which guests wore red caps mimicking Trump’s Maga slogan, bearing the legend: “Make Sixty Great Again.” Photographs of the party showed some guests apparently wearing “Blue Lives Matter” outfits, referencing the backlash against protests over police brutality in 2020.
In a post on X Sweeney complained that “an innocent celebration for my mom’s milestone 60th birthday has turned into an absurd political statement, which was not the intention”. The following year she told Variety that there had been “so many misinterpretations” about the party.
“The people in the pictures weren’t even my family,” she said. “The people who brought the things that people were upset about were actually my mom’s friends from LA who have kids that are walking outside in the Pride parade, and they thought it would be funny to wear because they were coming to Idaho.”