Some critics on the Left have called it a sexist attempt to appeal to Mr Trump’s “Maga” base, while others – noting the pun on “jeans” and “genes” – claimed it promotes eugenics and “Nazi propaganda”.
“It seemed clear to me that they [American Eagle] were aligning themselves with a white nationalist, Maga-friendly identity,” Shalini Shankar, an anthropology professor at Northwestern University, told CNN.
JD Vance, the vice-president, said the Left’s “crazy” reaction to the advert showed they had failed to learn from Mr Trump’s electoral victory last year.
“Did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election?” he asked on Friday. “I actually thought that one of the lessons they might take is we’re going to be less crazy. The lesson they have apparently taken is ‘we’re going to attack people as Nazis for thinking Sydney Sweeney is beautiful’. Great strategy.”
“Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women,” said Ted Cruz, the Republican senator for Texas, this week.
“I’m sure that will poll well.”
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, called the criticisms “cancel culture run amok” and hit out at the “warped, moronic and dense liberal thinking”.
Two years ago, Sweeney faced backlash from fans when she hosted a birthday “hoe-down” for her mother’s birthday where guests were pictured wearing red Maga-style caps with the words: “Make Sixty Great Again.”
The Euphoria star called the event an “innocent celebration” and said it had been “turned into an absurd political statement, which was not the intention”. “Please stop making assumptions,” she added.
‘Rigged’ against Trump
Last year, Mr Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels, a porn star with whom he was alleged to have had an affair shortly after the birth of his youngest son in 2006.
The then-presidential candidate declared himself the victim of a “rigged” justice system trying to stop his campaign to become president, prompting a groundswell of support from Republicans.
His campaign said it raised a record-breaking $53m (£40m) in the hours after the verdict, around a third of which came from donors who had never previously given money to the party. Mr Trump was handed an unconditional discharge 10 days before he took office in January.
The largely symbolic move meant he avoided any fines or jail time.
The Republicans have enjoyed limited celebrity backing under Mr Trump, while the Democrats made celebrity endorsements one of the linchpins of Kamala Harris’s campaign last year.
A representative for Sweeney has been approached for comment.
