Vice President Vance mocked critics of an American Eagle jeans ad featuring Sydney Sweeney in an interview published Friday, blaming Democrats for public discourse arguing the commercial endorses eugenics.
“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. No question,” Vance said during an appearance on the “Ruthless Podcast.”
The company’s ad campaign is entitled: “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.”
In one promotional video, Sweeney can be seen crossing out the word “genes” for “jeans.”
Some online have said the campaign promotes racial bias. But, “no prominent Democratic Party leaders or officials have commented on the ad,” as reported by CNN’s White House producer Alejandra Jaramillo.
“You can either say this was ignorance, or this was laziness, or say that this is intentional,” Marcus Collins, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, told the The Associated Press.
“Either one of the three aren’t good,” he added.
But Vance argued in the Friday interview that the left is reading too much into the commercial.
“They’re trying to sell, you know, sell jeans to kids in America. And they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing,” Vance told the podcasters.
“And it’s like, you guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election? Like 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, guys,” he added, slamming Democrats for their sweeping loss last year.
Other conservatives have sided with the vice president amid the controversy.
“I love how the leftist meltdown over the Sydney Sweeney ad has only resulted in a beautiful white blonde girl with blue eyes getting 1000x the exposure for her ‘good genes,’” former Fox News host Megyn Kelly wrote Tuesday on the social media platform X.
Vance said the commentary surrounding the ad, which he pegged as an effort backed by Democrats refusing to shift course after last year, would cost them election wins in 2026.
“That’s how you’re going to win the midterm, especially young American men. Their course correction lasts about 30 seconds,” he said.
“Somehow it’s gotten even crazier. But again, it’s just so much of the Democrats is oriented around hostility to basic American life.”
