MAGA’s newfound obsession with Sydney Sweeney took a turn for the deeply cringe in the form of a fawning tweet from the Department of Defense’s Rapid Response team.
On Monday afternoon, the @DODResponse account on X posted a photo of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disembarking from a plane in a sunglasses, a blue blazer, and blue jeans, with the caption, “@secdef has great jeans”.
The post comes after days of discourse surrounding a controversial American Eagle ad starring Sydney Sweeney that touted the actress’s ”good genes,” and which critics interpreted as endorsing eugenics.
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Criticism from the left led MAGA to defend Sydney Sweeney—whose filmography includes programs like Euphoria and The Handmaid’s Tale that many conservatives would likely dismiss as ‘woke‘—particularly when it was revealed that she was a registered Republican.
President Donald Trump weighed in on Sunday, telling reporters, “If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic!”
In a later Truth Social post, Trump misspelled her name, but told his followers that she had the “HOTTEST ad out there,” adding that the jeans she was advertising are “flying off the shelves.” ”Go get ‘em Sidney,” he declared.
Trump’s son, Don Jr., showed his support last week by sharing an AI-generated image of Trump in Sweeney’s place in the ad with the caption, “That Hanse…. Um, Donald is so hot right now!!!,” being a reference to Zoolander.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), meanwhile, wrote in a post on X, “Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women. I’m sure that will poll well….”
In the same vein, Vice President JD Vance criticized the left’s response to the ad during his appearance on the Ruthless podcast, telling the hosts, “My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi.”
He continued, “That appears to be their actual strategy. I mean, it actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems though, which is that you have a normal all-American beautiful girl doing like a normal jeans ad. They’re trying to sell jeans to kids in America and they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing. And it’s like, you guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election?”
While Sydney Sweeney has not responded publicly to the backlash, American Eagle released a statement that stressed that the ad “is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story.”
”We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone,” the statement read.
