Fox News is hard at work covering the “woke” outrage over Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle campaign, which it devoted substantially more mentions to than Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship with Donald Trump this week.
CNN anchor Abby Phillip laid out the stark figures highlighting colleague Brian Stelter’s “search for how many times both stories were mentioned on Fox.” The results were quite telling.
“Since Monday, 181 times for Sydney Sweeney’s jeans—just 18 times for Jeffrey Epstein,” she said showing example after example of the segments the network aired this week attacking “woke, liberal outrage” over Sweeney’s jeans campaign. The story that’s activated Trump’s base for years— convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged celebrity co-conspirators—got way less play by comparison.
“So obviously they’ve decided to bypass the story that they’ve hyped up for years in favor of intelligent and inquisitive analysis on a more important story,” Phillip said.
Added Stelter on X Friday, “Right-wing media outlets are hyping a left-wing ‘meltdown’ that isn’t happening.”
Media Matters investigated Fox News’ fixation with the backlash to Sweeney’s ad as well, comparing it to other networks. “While Newsmax has also covered the Sweeney ad, it has mentioned Epstein over 4 times as much as it has mentioned Sweeney (180 mentions to 42 mentions),” its report reads.
“CNN has mentioned Epstein over 100 times more than Sweeney (638 to 6), and MSNBC hasn’t mentioned Sweeney at all, while mentioning Epstein 756 times.”
“Fox News, on the other hand, has mentioned Sweeney over 4 times more than it’s mentioned Epstein” by Thursday afternoon, the report also says, and “devoted just 3 minutes of coverage to developments in the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein saga” compared to 85 minutes spent on the American Eagle ad.
Sweeney’s jeans campaign initially drew criticism on social media, with users pointing out that the emphasis on the blonde-haired, blue-eyed actress with the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great genes,” rang of eugenics and “Nazi propaganda,” promoting one genetic makeup over or another. “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color,” Sweeney says in one ad, before adding, “My jeans are blue.”
No one of any particular note on the left has criticized the campaign—despite what viewers have been hearing on Fox. In fact, the previously outmoded brand gained new relevance and a major stock bump from the campaign, and Sweeney gained some major new fans among Trump’s MAGA base, whether or not that was her intention.
But MAGA insists that “Democrats” are attacking the actress and the ads. White House communications director Steven Cheung added his two cents this week, calling criticism of the campaign “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 bulls--t.”
JD Vance told the Ruthless podcast, “My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi.” Others in Trump’s orbit, like Ted Cruz, have taken the opportunity to fawn over the actress.
Phillips questioned Thursday night why the internet conversation, which Fox insisted time and again this week was a liberal “meltdown,” would be more important to the network than the recent reports Trump had a deeper than previously disclosed friendship with the convicted pedophile, whose dealings his supporters were most adamant he would expose when he took office this year.
“Now this is a type of internet discourse in which a story like this starts with a random person online who gets amplified by people who need these stories to maintain their relevance,” Phillips said. “So in this outrage ecosystem that we are in, it’s fair to ask who exactly is having a meltdown in this case?”
