Stock in American Eagle is flying after President Donald Trump weighed in on Sydney Sweeney’s jeans ad controversy.
Conversations around the clothing brand’s punny “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” ad campaign have consumed the internet, so much so that the president gave his two cents on the matter Monday morning. Since then, the brand’s stock has skyrocketed.
As of Monday afternoon, the company’s stock was up 2.57 points, or nearly 24 percent.
At 8.56 a.m. Monday, Trump praised the ad and noted the Euphoria star was a registered Republican and “has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there,” he wrote on Truth Social. The president also took a jab at what he believed to be “WOKE,” including singer Taylor Swift, writing: “Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be.”
The company’s stock started climbing, reaching 12.47 points by 10.15 a.m.
At 10.25 a.m., Trump took down the post and reposted it with a corrected spelling of Sweeney’s first name. The stock has continued to rise since.
The president first weighed in on the ad campaign Sunday. “She’s a registered Republican?” the president asked while speaking to reporters. “Now I love her ad.”
In one video, the blonde-haired blue-eyed actress, wearing an all-denim getup, looks at the camera and says: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color.” She adds: “My jeans are blue.”
With a pun on the word “genes,” the narrator then says: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
The wordplay is at the heart of the online backlash. Critics say the ad’s word choices evoke the language of eugenics – the racist and discredited belief that the human race can be improved through selective breeding.
American Eagle has defended the ad campaign. It “is and always was about the jeans,” the retailer said in a statement Friday.
“We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way,” the statement continued. “Great jeans look good on everyone.”
Sweeney has yet to make a public statement on the matter.
Some social media users have claimed that Trump is commenting on the internet debate to latch onto the latest distraction from the Jeffrey Epstein files after the Justice Department issued a memo related to the late sex offender’s case last month.
But much to the disappointment of many, the memo contained no new revelations. The DOJ confirmed that Epstein died by suicide and said there was no evidence to support the existence of a “client list” of high profile individuals involved in his alleged sex trafficking scheme.
“When it comes to identifying a distraction from a real issue, we have a current object lesson: Sydney Sweeney = Distraction Jeffrey Epstein = Real issue,” Sarah Longwell, a GOP political strategist and founder of the conservative news siteThe Bulwark, wrote on X.
“The thing I like most about Sydney Sweeney is that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files,” another X user wrote Monday.
“Donald Trump is posting about Sydney Sweeney and Taylor Swift because he doesn’t want to talk about the fact that he’s in the Epstein files, doesn’t want to talk about rising prices, and doesn’t want to talk about the job market being the worst it’s been since the last time he was president,” another wrote. “It’s all distraction politics. Don’t take the bait.”
A chunk of the MAGA base, and politicians on both sides of the aisle, along with others, have demanded heightened transparency around the Epstein case. Although Trump has denied that his name was in the files, the Wall Street Journal reported that DOJ officials told the president in May that his name, among many others, had appeared. Being named in the files does not suggest any wrongdoing.
The president is suing the Journal and its owners for $10 billion over an article published in the newspaper that claimed he drew a sexually suggestive birthday card for Epstein in 2003. Trump has denied he drew the card.
