Donald Trump Jr. made an attempt to diss the left by calling his dad “hot” in an AI-generated image of his father parodying Sydney Sweeney’s controversial American Eagle ad campaign.
“That Hanse.... Um, Donald is so hot right now!!!,” he wrote in a post featuring an AI image of President Donald Trump posing on the floor wearing a denim outfit. The caption was a reference to Owen Wilson’s character Hansel McDonald in “Zoolander.”
Although Donald Trump Jr.’s weird comment was made as a joke, this was not the first time he has said something uncomfortable about a family member.
In a TikTok video posted last year, the president’s son referred to his daughter Kai as “sexy” while the two were getting prepared for the Republican National Convention. In the video, he asked Kai, then 17, if wearing makeup would make him “sexy like you.”
Though he was presumably kidding around, many people nevertheless found it a very odd word for a father to call his underaged daughter.
The president has also made some uncomfortable comments about his own daughter Ivanka. In 2004 he gave radio host Howard Stern permission to call her a “piece of ass,” and stated on ABC’s “The View” in 2006 that “if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”
Miles Taylor, who served as Department of Homeland Security chief of staff under Donald Trump, claimed in his book that the president talked about his daughter’s “breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her.”
Donald Trump Jr.’s unsettling AI-generated post was a spoof of American Eagle’s recent ad campaign featuring Sweeney, 27. The ads have received backlash online after some accused them of having racist undertones and promoting eugenics.
In one ad, Sweeney, a white woman with blue eyes and blond hair, is shown lying down as the camera pans sideways to show her zipping up her jeans as she narrates about genetic traits.
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue,” Sweeney says before the screen promotes the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” a pun on the word “genes.”
The campaign sparked outrage online as some began calling it an alt-right dog whistle.
“The American Eagles ad wasn’t just a commercial. It was a love letter to white nationalism and eugenic fantasies, and Sydney Sweeney knew it,” activist influencer Zellie Imani said on X.
Right-wingers came to the defense of Sweeney and American Eagle amid the criticism.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz said the “Left” criticizing Sweeney’s ads won’t poll well.
“Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women,” Cruz wrote on X.
The senator was quickly reminded about the time he liked a hardcore porn video featuring a blond adult actress on Twitter.
Donald Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, chimed in on the controversy, calling it “Cancel culture run 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 bullshit,” Cheung wrote.