Donald Trump praises Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle campaign

Sydney Sweeney’s controversial campaign with American Eagle has a new public fan.

President Donald Trump has provided his two cents on the discourse surrounding Sweeney’s recent collaboration with American Eagle, and the fallout from their “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” campaign.

In video footage captured by CNN, Trump was asked about Sweeney and the campaign while speaking with reporters shortly before boarding Air Force One in Allentown, Pa., on Sunday. A reporter informed the president that the actress is a registered Republican.

“She’s a registered Republican? Oh, now I love her ad!” Trump quipped. “Is that right? Is Sydney Sweeney…? You’d be surprised at how many people are Republicans. That’s one I wouldn’t have known.”

He added, “But I’m glad you told me that. If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic!”

Trump didn’t stop there; on Monday he took to Truth Social to heap more praise on the ad campaign.

“Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there,” he wrote in part. “It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying off the shelves.’ Go get ’em Sydney!”

He added, “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!”

Trump’s ringing endorsement comes after multiple outlets reported over the weekend that the Anyone But You star registered as a Republican in Florida on June 14, 2024, prior to Trump’s re-election. Entertainment Weekly has confirmed Sweeney’s voter registration.

It isn’t the first time that Sweeney’s political affiliation has been under scrutiny: The Euphoria star became the subject of online vitriol in 2022 after she shared photos from her mother’s 60th birthday party that featured guests in what appeared to be Blue Lives Matter garb and MAGA-themed red hats that read, “Make Sixty Great Again.”

In an interview with Variety a year later, Sweeney claimed the people in the photos weren’t her family members, telling the outlet they were “my mom’s friends from L.A.”

“People are so fast to build someone up, and then they love tearing them down,” she added.

The two-time Emmy nominee previously expressed frustration about not being understood by her family and friends from her conservative hometown of Spokane County, Wash., while in conversation with British GQ in 2022.

“When I go home, my family doesn’t understand me or the world I’m in anymore,” she said at the time. “But then in this industry, my home and the place that grounds me is so vastly different to how people live there. I’m in this in-between place where I feel like neither side understands me.”

With the recent reveal of her political affiliation, Sweeney can probably expect more “misinterpretations” like the ones after her mom’s controversial soirée.

While Sweeney has yet to formally address the accusations that her campaign with American Eagle espouses eugenics ideology, the brand issued its statement on Friday, after a week of online discourse.

“‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans, her story,” reads the statement posted on Aug. 1. “We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”

The response to AE’s statement is as divided as the response to the campaign itself.

“Didn’t think the response could be even worse than the ad but it somehow was,” one commenter wrote. Another user wrote, “Wow, doubling down. I’ll stick to buying second hand AE from now on. C’mon. To say that wasn’t a euphemism is crazy.”

On the other end of the spectrum, some users celebrated the message. “Never bought AE but now I’m a customer,” one comment reads, while another says, “Good publicity. I like your brand before this *controversy* but I like you guys even more now!”

Content creators flocked to TikTok to share their thoughts on the brand’s messaging, calling American Eagle out for having a white, blonde, blue-eyed woman talking about “good genes.”

Conservative public figures voiced their thoughts on the campaign in the opposing direction, including White House communications director Steven Cheung and TV personality Megyn Kelly.

Most recently, Vice President JD Vance chimed in on the backlash during Friday’s episode of the Ruthless podcast, saying he believed the discourse reveals “something pretty interesting” about Democrats.

“I actually thought that one of the lessons [Democrats] might take is we’re going to be less crazy,” Vance said. “And the lesson they have apparently taken is we’re going to attack people as Nazis for thinking Sydney Sweeney is beautiful. Great strategy, guys. That’s how you’re going to win the midterm, especially young American men.”

Vance added, “So much of the Democrats is oriented around hostility to basic American life. So you have a pretty girl doing a jeans ad and they can’t help but freak out. It reveals a lot more about them than it does us.”

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Entertainment Weekly has reached out to Sweeney’s rep for comment.