Add Sen. Ted Cruz to the chorus of conservatives who are defending Sydney Sweeney amid heated backlash to her American Eagle campaign.
On Tuesday, the Texas Republican offered a snide, politically charged take on the controversy on X, formerly Twitter.
“Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women,” Cruz wrote alongside a New York Post article about the campaign. “I’m sure that will poll well...”
He doubled down on his remarks while appearing on Fox News in a segment that aired later on Tuesday, using the Sweeney furor as an example of “how extreme” he feels the Democratic Party has become.
“This week the Democrats have decided, with the Sydney Sweeney jeans ad, that they hate beautiful women,” he said. “That’s just a little nuts for them to say, ‘I’m sorry, we’re the Democrats. Beautiful women are no longer acceptable in our society.’”
Sweeney, best known for her portrayal of Cassandra “Cassie” Howard on HBO’s Euphoria, has faced a barrage of criticism this week following the release of her American Eagle ads, which play off the words “genes” and “jeans.”
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color,” the actor explains in one of the ads. “My jeans are blue.”
A narrator then reads the tagline: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
Though the ad seems to be intended as an homage to Brooke Shields’ 1980 Calvin Klein campaign ― also controversial for its time ― some fans on social media felt it contained white supremacist undertones.
“Having Sydney Sweeney talk about her genes/jeans is already a bad look for American Eagle, but calling her genes/jeans ‘blue’ takes it even further, hinting at ‘blue blood,’ a term historically tied to whiteness and aristocratic lineage,” the Instagram account Style Analytics wrote. “It’s a nod to eugenics, aligning the brand with the growing conservative/right-wing/white supremacy movement ... This is just one way brands have recently been attempting to plaicate to conservatives.”
Many echoed those sentiments, including one TikTok user who called the ad “what happens when you have a bunch of white folk who all look and think the same.”
Added another on X: “This is so Hitler like what.”
Neither Sweeney nor American Eagle has responded to the criticism over the campaign. Cruz, however, is among a growing number of conservatives, including White House Communications Director Steven Cheung and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, in defending the ads.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.