Donald Trump’s White House communications chief, Steven Cheung, has hit out at the backlash over actress Sydney Sweeney’s new American Eagle jeans ad, calling the outrage “moronic” and blaming it on “cancel culture.”He argued that this kind of controversy is exactly why Donald Trump won the 2024 election, saying Americans are “tired of this.”Cheung dismissed the backlash as yet another example of cancel culture gone too far. “Cancel culture runs amok. 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 bulls**t,” he wrote on X.The controversy centers around a play on words, “great jeans” which many saw as a reference to her genetics rather than just the denim she wore.The ad features the 27-year-old Euphoria star as she is seen in a nostalgic Americana setting, fixing a car and driving while wearing American Eagle jeans.The campaign tagline, “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” plays on the word “genes.” In a video, Sweeney uses red paint to change the word “genes” to “jeans” and says in a voiceover: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”While meant to be lighthearted, the campaign sparked outrage online, with critics accusing it of celebrating Sweeney’s whiteness and thin physique. Some even went as far with several viral responses criticising the advertisement claiming it promotes racial superiority, eugenic ideologies, and Nazi-like propaganda regarding a superior race.Cheung wasn’t the only conservative to criticise the backlash over the ad. TV host Megyn Kelly also slammed the reaction, calling it “absurd” on her podcast and blaming the “lunatic left” for stirring up unnecessary outrage.“She’s being called a white supremacist by people who don’t like her latest ad, which is for American Eagle,” Kelly said.“She’s advertising jeans, and yet the lunatics on the left think she’s advertising white supremacy. This is obviously a reference to her body and not to her skin color, but the lunatic left is going to do what the lunatic left is going to do,” she added.Kelly argued that critics are “upset because it’s about who gets to be the face of America’s Best Genes. They think it’s no accident that they’ve chosen a white, thin woman because you’re, I guess, not allowed to celebrate those things in any way, shape, or form. But they’re completely ignoring the reference to her body, which is the thing she’s famous for. It’s just absurd.”
