00:03:06.500To help us do all of that today, welcome back to the show, two of my best friends and two of the smartest culture and political critics I have ever known, Kat Tenbarge and Taylor Lorenz.
00:03:52.100Just in the sense that I did not watch Euphoria. I've seen like two episodes of Euphoria. But I always found her very like attractive and very compelling in that sense. And I also think that Sidney Sweeney has been part of the like algorithmic treadmill for a while.
00:04:08.700because the thing about like sydney sweeney and her like euphoria rise to prominence is that
00:04:16.980obviously the sex scenes in that show and the sex scenes in a lot of sam levinson productions which
00:04:23.140i could say a lot about sam levinson because i hate that man cat texted me beforehand and she
00:04:31.080was like i'm gonna try not to rant about sam levinson and we are three minutes into the
00:04:35.020here it comes go for it sam levinson my my biggest issue with him is that he takes women's work
00:04:43.820and then he creates these productions that are really fetishistic toward women and it's not
00:04:50.580inherently wrong to like make like a really sexy show but i think the problem i have with him is
00:04:56.120that he has repeatedly been accused of like plagiarism essentially from women creatives
00:05:02.040so like the aesthetic of euphoria petra collins alleged that like she came up with it and then
00:05:06.920he stole it from her and that's the most popular best thing about euphoria from what i can tell
00:05:12.620but anyways sydney sweeney was in these really raunchy sex scenes and from the second that they
00:05:19.180debuted on television they became some of the like most viral clips of sex scenes ever because
00:05:27.360Because, like, you go on Reddit where, like, these are, like, Reddit is a very male-dominated
00:05:31.780platform, so anything to do with celebrity women on Reddit trends, like, sexually explicit,
00:05:37.740and these just, like, immediately became the most engaged with clips ever.
00:05:42.360And I think ever since then, you've seen Sydney Sweeney, like, so thoroughly embedded in,
00:05:48.000like, what social medias are trained to recognize that it has had, like, a huge effect on how
00:05:54.100popular she is and how much posts about her get traction yeah there is a there is a Megan Fox
00:06:01.020quality to it too it reminds me of how insane men would be about Megan Fox like 15 years ago
00:06:06.760but there's this added like political component to it now which we're going to talk about Taylor
00:06:11.920I want to get your hot take onto why Sydney Sweeney makes everyone unable to act normally0.82
00:06:17.600every generation of celebrity there is like one usually extremely conventionally attractive like
00:06:23.980blonde woman that is made into sort of like the bombshell of the era. And they sort of represent
00:06:30.600like the pinnacle of female beauty of that era. Like we had Scarlett Johansson. We had like,
00:06:36.900there's just endless generations of beautiful women like this. I think Sydney Sweeney is that1.00
00:06:40.360modern woman. And I think she leans into that role. Yes. And she didn't always. So I want to
00:06:46.380do a little bit of Sydney Sweeney history slash background info for anyone who is truly, I always
00:06:52.600say like if you're under a rock and you don't know what i'm talking about but like this one you got
00:06:56.300to be like really like deep underground to not know what's going on with sydney sweeney and i'm
00:07:00.160happy for you and i'm about to take that away from you so sydney sweeney is a 27 year old actor who
00:07:06.000grew up in rural idaho sorry rural washington in the idaho panhandle on the washington idaho border
00:07:14.520classic mix-up in a conservative religious family in a house that her family has owned for five
00:07:20.900generations which by the way fast forward when it was revealed that sydney sweeney is a registered
00:07:27.280republican in florida there was some like shock and awe around that but i'm like you know i don't
00:07:33.740know five generations in the same house in rural idaho conservative religion i not to say you can't
00:07:39.640break out of that but you know there have been more shocking political turns in my day anyway
00:07:44.260she got into acting as a teenager and moved to la as a 13 year old to pursue acting she briefly
00:07:52.140had a job at universal studios and she also briefly attended ucla before her acting career
00:07:58.360really started to take off i remember the first time i saw sydney sweeney i think it was in sharp
00:08:02.860objects where she played alongside amy adams in this small role as a mentally ill and disturbed
00:08:09.640teenager and then she was in the handmaid's tale which a lot of people forget about i don't remember
00:08:15.740her being in that she was in the handmaid's tale as like a young girl who was like in this like
00:08:21.540public arranged marriage oh yeah oh my god i feel like this was before i paid attention to her well
00:08:30.200and she was also it was years ago but also side note it's just kind of funny to me that like
00:08:35.700The Handmaid's Tale starred Elizabeth Moss, who's a Scientologist, and smaller role but co-starred
00:08:42.460Sidney Sweeney, who's this Republican. It's like, they read the script for The Handmaid's Tale and
00:08:47.920they were like, let's do this. Yeah. Well, one thing about Sidney Sweeney is she's gonna show
00:08:54.140up to work. So Sidney Sweeney would really shoot into the limelight as a star in Euphoria and The
00:09:04.080White Lotus, two shows which I don't feel like are in the conservative zeitgeist at all,
00:09:19.120And so they're supposed to be these like sort of reactionary young girls.
00:09:23.680They had them watch or listen, subject themselves to Red Scare to train for that role.
00:09:29.920But they're supposed to be this like disaffected kind of reactionary, like cool, young people, even though Dasha's not young. I think she's my age.
00:09:38.700I totally forgot about that. And you're right. Her character on The White Lotus was this, I mean, Red Scare, it started, it's a podcast. If you don't know Red Scare, that's one that I'm actually not going to subject you to any information about because it's truly like the worst brain rot you'll ever experience.
00:09:54.380But it's it's a it's a podcast that started framing itself as like a post identity politics left podcast run by these two women named Dasha and Anna.0.99
00:10:02.780And then it very quickly just became like a right wing trad Catholic trad wife, like crock of shit, really.0.98
00:10:10.940I think that's a great description of it.0.99
00:10:12.560I wonder if Sydney Sweeney got radicalized when she had to listen to that.
00:10:16.600Well, I think this girl was radicalized.
00:15:09.560She's not seen as sort of like premium.0.98
00:15:11.860She's seen as like accessible, like commercial,
00:15:15.240where it's like she can do the Dunkin' ad.
00:15:17.240I feel like that's also like a branding on behalf of her team, though. They're like, we want her to be this highly commercial entity. And we want to lean into the sex. Like, I don't like when people talk about celebrities as if they don't make any of their own decisions. But there is definitely, you know, a team working together to decide who is the product of Sydney Sweeney, who keeps giving her all of these products to promote these again, these like fuck ass.
00:15:43.560she also doesn't do like highbrow projects and i think that that feeds into it too like she's doing0.88
00:15:50.360like mass market netflix like rom-com and scarlett johansson went through this period too right where0.92
00:15:55.300like she tried to sort of like reinvent herself and do these more like cerebral type films and
00:16:00.820be a real you know do more movies as opposed to tv and stuff and i don't think that sydney's made
00:16:05.260that jump and you're right matt like some of that is definitely like positioning from you know her
00:16:09.180agents or whatever somebody tweeted like she must be in like debt to like a mob boss or something
00:16:13.880like she will hawk anything it's really interesting because like a period of time
00:16:21.360where I actually both liked her and would have assumed that she was more liberal back in 2022
00:16:27.700when she was really starting to take off and like ascend to this level of superstardom1.00
00:16:33.660she did an interview she she expressed frustration at nepo babies and how they don't have to work as0.99
00:16:39.680hard as she had to work to like get to where she is and she talked about how she couldn't take six1.00
00:16:43.960months off because she wouldn't be able to afford it and she talked about how like so much of the
00:16:48.780money she makes goes to her publicist her agent her manager like all of these people and this was
00:16:54.720a huge controversy people have basically accused her of being like more privileged than she was
00:16:59.580letting on and like how dare she complain and like no one can take six months off from work
00:17:04.180however there was an amazing article that Kelsey McKinney wrote for Defector which was basically
00:17:10.040like it's true this generation of actors is not nearly as privileged as like the Jennifer Aniston
00:17:15.640generation of actors where you could do a show like Friends and then coast off of that for the
00:17:20.180rest of your life famously Writers Guild they don't get residuals the same way they used to
00:17:25.260so they have to keep working and she has to like I think she truly does have to do a lot of
00:17:31.220advertisements but what is so interesting about that too is like I agree with you Matt like there's
00:17:36.300a little bit of like personal choice versus like responding to the market and what people want from
00:17:41.780you and you see how she has been like driven to lean into that sexualization more and more and
00:17:47.280more it's just wild to me that she can experience all these things and still walk away and be like
00:17:53.420fiscally conservative and be a registered Republican. Yeah, well, I remember that whole
00:17:59.340thing, too, where she was like, I can't afford to stop working for six months. And I do think that
00:18:05.360in the last few years since she said that, she's definitely ascended to a level where that's no
00:18:09.680longer the case. She did last year buy a $13 million home in Florida, which was when she
00:18:16.360moved there, also the same time that she registered to vote as a Republican. Red flag, red flag.0.99
00:18:21.340so i mean i think it is very possible that she did attain a level of financial security that now0.95
00:18:28.660of course she has to do all of this shit to keep up with but i want to play for you one of the ads0.70
00:18:33.480she did recently it is for hey dude which is a men's shoe line and i have never heard of hey0.97
00:18:40.300dude in my life but clearly a lot of people are buying them because they could afford sydney
00:18:44.480sweeney's day rate you can take the dude out of the country you can't take the country out of the
00:18:49.800all of her ads are the same i had to watch that like six times before i knew what she was saying
00:19:06.440you can take the dude out of the country but you can't take the country out of the dude
00:19:12.060i'm i'm happy for her i just want to say like i'm happy for her if she wants to advertise hey dude
00:19:17.860you don't even know what she's selling in these advertisements but but i bring this up i am
00:19:21.840particularly interested and people have drawn attention to the voice that she seems to do
00:19:27.540the intonation in her voice when she's doing these things it's there's no enunciation well
00:19:33.260she's talking in like a like a phone sex operator voice and i am not making fun of her voice i'm not
00:19:42.340As people on this podcast, especially Kat and I, who have had our voices mocked and thumbs down extensively, I am not making fun of anyone's voice, but there does seem to be a performative cadence to how she's speaking.
00:19:57.280She also kind of famously had this micro-controversy around her partnership with men's soap brand Dr. Squatch, another company I've never heard of, to sell a line of soaps allegedly made with her bathwater.
00:20:12.020Yes. As Taylor was saying, she does this like phone sex operator voice in these commercials.
00:20:18.480And with the bathwater, it really clicked for me that like she is borrowing from this culture of0.97
00:20:26.380sex workers and porn performers and like e-girls. Bathwater, very famously, like selling your1.00
00:20:33.240bathwater became a thing when Belle Delphine did it over five years ago, I think now.1.00
00:20:39.080and it was a huge controversy and it was a huge pop culture moment because she was selling like0.83
00:20:43.980gamer girl bath water and people were buying it they were drinking it they were smelling it it
00:20:49.440was all like gross men and when Cindy Sweeney did this it really like made me think that we are in
00:20:56.300this moment of pop culture and there are other celebrities doing this too right now where it's
00:21:01.560like the things that sex workers have brought to the cultural forefront are now being kind of
00:21:06.400appropriated by this class of celebrity who can reap the benefits of how good that is for your
00:21:13.240brand, for monetizing, for whatever, without having to reap the discriminatory consequences
00:21:18.480of being a sex worker. Because Belle Delphine, when she sold the bathwater, her PayPal account1.00
00:21:24.940got shut down and all that money she made was actually seized from her and stolen from her1.00
00:21:31.380because she is a sex worker. So I just think that it is particularly egregious that Sidney Sweeney
00:21:37.680is apparently like a Republican. Republicans want to ban porn. They want to jail all sex workers.
00:21:43.960And so like she's profiting from this trend that was started by this woman, but she does not in0.98
00:21:48.980any way like stand for the women who made this possible for her. Oof. Well said. I would like0.95
00:21:56.060to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to the Freedom From Religion Foundation,
00:22:02.000which is perhaps the most fitting and easiest brand partner this podcast has ever had. Friendly
00:22:08.180reminder, if you are living in the United States, Jesus is not your guidance counselor, and your tax
00:22:14.740dollars should not be paying for a sermon in algebra. And yet, here we are. States are forcing
00:22:21.480religious posters in classrooms, swapping out licensed mental health staff for unlicensed
00:22:27.740school chaplains, and shoveling public money that should be going towards public schools0.82
00:22:33.340and making them better and giving teachers supplies and fixing the ruse into private
00:22:39.140religious schools through these shady voucher schemes.
00:22:42.780Let me know if you want me to make a separate episode on that, because it really is a whole0.99
00:22:45.500thing and it is quite literally end times shit, in my opinion.0.94
00:22:49.700Not in the way these people think, though.0.92
00:22:51.480Anyway, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is doing some really important work to fight the influence of religion in government and the people who are pushing it.
00:23:00.160They're suing, educating, and fighting to keep religion out of government and out of your kids' classrooms.
00:23:05.900You can join their fight, which is really all of our fight, by going to ffrf.us slash school or texting FREEDOM to 511-511, 511-511.0.94
00:23:18.980that's ffrf.us slash school or text freedom to 511 511 because you didn't survive purity culture
00:23:28.620just to have it show up in your kids math class shout out to the freedom for religion foundation
00:23:34.160for all the important work that they do go be a part of the fight and yes text fees may apply
00:23:40.560i love reading legal disclaimer all right now let's get back to the show should we talk about
00:23:48.080american eagle let's do it yes you can take the country out of the dude but you can never you can
00:23:52.640take the dude out of the country but you can never take the country out of the dead i love it
00:23:56.420so even through the bathwater scandal i was able to go about my day while getting very very few
00:24:05.260messages from people asking me to like talk about it on the podcast like to do anything about you
00:24:10.960know sydney sweeney and i was perplexed by the bathwater soap scandal but i did not want to make
00:24:17.420a podcast episode about it. But then something happened recently that I mentioned up top that
00:24:21.600got me so many messages, so many requests to do this very episode that I could not ignore it.
00:24:27.600So middle of July, Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle unveil a series of commercial advertisements
00:24:34.420that they did together. And I want to just start by playing a few of them for you.
00:24:38.900I'm not here to tell you to buy American Eagle jeans. And I definitely won't say that they're
00:24:43.900the most comfortable jeans I've ever worn or that they make your butt look0.74
00:24:49.000amazing. Why would I need to do that? But if you said that you want to buy the0.86
00:24:56.740jeans, I'm not gonna stop you. But just so we're clear, this is not me telling you
00:25:02.200to buy American Eagle jeans. You see what I did there, right? My body's
00:25:08.340composition is determined by my genes hey eyes up here sydney sweeney has great genes1.00
00:25:18.980okay am i crazy or is that giving like low budget0.98
00:25:23.500if you're not watching the video version of this it's just her walking around0.95
00:25:29.080an empty room or like next to a car in an empty room just like wearing jeans and like0.98
00:25:34.740caressing herself while speaking in this phone sex operator voice that I know isn't natural to0.99
00:25:41.380her. I've seen her in other things and she does not talk like this. She doesn't talk like that0.94
00:25:45.980in her movie roles, in her TV roles rather. She enunciates. She does enunciate. She can.
00:25:52.000We haven't watched the main one yet. And I know you want us, if you're tapped into this
00:25:55.660controversy already, you know we're going to talk about the main ad, but we're not there yet.
00:25:59.900I just I saw these ads and I didn't find them as offensive as I did just like overly like self-serious and like poorly acted and almost almost a mockery of how easy it is to like performatively seduce heterosexual men.
00:26:17.900like i feel like if she pushed the whole shtick of like i'm just a girl do you like my body like
00:26:24.380it almost could be like an anna nicole smith like campy territory of like that like my body
00:26:31.360but because it doesn't go full camp to me it falls like just shy of that you know what reminds
00:26:38.300me of this so much is paris hilton who also put on an effect and do you remember the extremely
00:26:45.580famous 2005 carl's jr commercial that paris did yes where she's like this is what gay guys talk
00:26:53.600about eating a burger like washing a car like it is soft core porn basically it's honestly a lot of0.62
00:27:01.980uh sydney's ads remind me of sort of like the worst of the mid-2000s views of women and also
00:27:08.220just like this like hyper sexualized like persona that paris as well took on and has and talks about
00:27:14.820it now how like that entire persona was an affect and it was really just for marketing because men0.97
00:27:21.660liked it and not because she speaks like that and she considers herself actually a tomboy and
00:27:26.000doesn't speak like that in normal life but i think yes and then i also think a key difference between
00:27:30.740what's happening here and what paris was doing was like paris i don't think you had to be that
00:27:36.180smart to know that there was like an angle here and that this was a show like she was like she
00:27:41.740was like dripping a burger on herself on top of a car like it was absurd and to me this is like0.84
00:27:46.620just shy of absurd i think it is absurd like i also think that now we look at that commercial
00:27:52.540as absurd and i do think paris was so campy and over at the top and sort of there was like a
00:27:57.720joke there almost but i i do think there's something about this like type of advertising
00:28:03.060that sydney sweeney is really leaning into and even just like the script and the format and the
00:28:07.460voice and the shots and everything that feels very kind of uh regressive it reminds me of hooters
00:28:14.140and it reminds me of like an era that conservatives are wanting to reclaim culturally which was an
00:28:23.000era where women were more commonly understood as like decor essentially like women were more0.80
00:28:29.360ornamental and women could be easily separated into categories of like prude or slut it's also
00:28:35.980fascinating to me that like Paris Hilton also is like a like a voting conservative at least used0.64
00:28:41.160to be I believe voted for Trump and I find it interesting that these women like they have a lot
00:28:46.180of nuance about the way that they were portrayed and how they portrayed themselves but at the end
00:28:52.100of the day it's like I think that so much of their ultimate loyalty is to wealth and to capital and
00:28:58.560so that is another reason why they so commonly support like the exact same types of power and
00:29:05.080authority that ultimately like subjugate them should we watch the the ad ad we have to i've
00:29:12.820watched this so many times in the last few weeks that it makes me want to die okay here we go
00:29:19.800genes are passed down from parents to offspring often determining traits like hair color
00:29:24.960personality and even eye color my genes are blue sydney sweeney has great genes
00:29:33.840my jens are blue jens are passed down from parents that voice is it is really grating
00:29:41.980she starts like speaking and like every syllable gets so slow in that one in particular that i'm
00:29:49.240like girl like i'm afraid you're not gonna make it to the end of the sentence like you're gonna
00:29:52.840run out of juice well it's ironically it's similar to the white lotus voice that she was doing yeah
00:29:59.200yeah yeah where it's this like disaffected type drawl that ad obviously is also like a remake
00:30:05.360of another yes very well-known ad yes and that's actually where my mind went to first when i saw
00:30:12.620this i did not immediately think eugenics i immediately thought why are we remaking the
00:30:18.060brooke shields ad which was also very eugenics by the way and and also pedophilic oh 100 she was a
00:30:24.400child. Yes, exactly. So decades ago, a 15-year-old Brooke Shields featured in a series of very creepy0.69
00:30:32.560Calvin Klein advertisements that had a similar kind of like bare bones, it's just me in an empty
00:30:39.660room in my jeans vibe. And in one of those commercials, Brooke Shields kind of struggled
00:30:45.000to put on her jeans, like performatively posing in all of these different ridiculous ways, again,
00:30:49.700as a 15-year-old, which is just bizarre to watch now. While she did that, she kind of just recited
00:30:55.580an encyclopedic definition of genetics, genes, while putting on genes. And I think the key
00:31:01.720difference between hers and Sydney's is that Sydney's is like, my genes are good. My genetics
00:31:07.720are good. Whereas Brooks didn't quite say that. She was just making the pun of genes and genes.
00:31:13.840But even still, those commercials were widely derided because they were quite pedophilic. I mean, in one of the Brooke Shields ads, she said, what gets between my Calvins and I? Nothing. And she was, you know, a high school freshman. So my mind when I first saw this ad was like, why are we remaking the Brooke Shields ad?
00:31:35.100didn't that come out in the 80s yeah it was the 80s oh yeah 1980 i just think what's so interesting
00:31:39.640is like we are seeing this resurgence of conservatism in a way that we haven't seen
00:31:43.940since the 80s and we're like almost replicating like bar for bar so much of the worst of that
00:31:50.140brand of republicanism and conservatism whether it's rank homophobia weird genetics ads like
00:31:57.480i mean eugenics generally hyper capitalism like obsession with you know market economics and
00:32:04.340wealth and greed. And obviously none of us were like, I don't even know if you guys were born.
00:32:09.200I was barely sentient in the eighties. So like, I feel like none of us like lived through that,
00:32:15.040but, um, a lot of culture today feels like it's like hearkening back to that era.
00:32:19.620So because I am so online and so like deeply tuned into like leftist online posting and like
00:32:27.800very niche, like leftist online posting, I could only ever see the, the, that ad through the lens
00:32:33.220of like I did see that people were talking about it in the sense of eugenics so I never saw it and
00:32:38.840like got to form an opinion without already knowing that there was backlash to it but I think
00:32:43.540that it's like so impossible to separate it from the context of the political moment that we are
00:32:49.700living in right now even if the ad just said like something about like having blue eyes and like0.71
00:32:56.980she's like a blonde haired blue eyed hot woman who leans into these like conservative cultural
00:33:03.840roles so I do feel like even if it wasn't fully like intentionally like eugenics based I almost
00:33:11.740think it doesn't matter because it's like even if every single person behind the creative direction
00:33:16.500did not have that in mind I'm like it just fits so neatly into the moment we are living through
00:33:21.920right now? I do think that it's impossible to separate from this moment of, again, the fifth
00:33:27.440year of an ongoing pandemic where we're seeing eugenics also in regards to Palestine, where0.60
00:33:31.760like the Free Pest published this disgusting piece that was like, actually, the people dying
00:33:37.060of famine were high risk anyway. So we're just seeing, I mean, just eugenics all over. And also
00:33:42.620then you're seeing the rise of Ozimpek and all of these like, you know, plastic surgery procedures0.98
00:33:47.760and stuff where it's like, there's fewer and fewer like excuses for not conforming to society's
00:33:53.300standards of beauty. And you're also seeing like conservatives try to make those standards of
00:33:56.700beauty more and more rigid. And so I just think it's impossible to like separate this ad from
00:34:01.380all of that because the reality is this type of ad would not be written or remade or even perform
00:34:06.260well like five years ago. Yeah, 100%. I mean, the entire ethos of MAGA, which promises to return
00:34:14.260America to a time when people who look like Sidney Sweeney had total control over society.0.91
00:34:18.740Yeah, I mean, it's not a good look to do a, you know, a thin white woman with blonde hair and1.00
00:34:23.400blue eyes has good genetics. I mean, the idea of good genetics implies bad genetics, which in and0.99
00:34:29.360of itself is the premise of eugenics. I mean, I will say again, the first time I saw it, I was0.87
00:34:36.140just kind of like, this is creepy. And this is corny. I didn't immediately think like eugenics,
00:34:41.480I didn't immediately think about all of this stuff that we do, in fairness, talk a lot about
00:34:45.640in different ways and different contexts on this podcast. I just saw it and I was kind of like,
00:34:49.840this is another Sydney Sweeney ad where it's like extremely sexual in an extremely like male
00:34:56.080gazey way, but with this added layer of like, but we're talking about genetics. So that's kind of
00:35:01.480weird. But for me, it became a matter of scale. And the scale of this controversy, which in my
00:35:08.540opinion could have just been like discourse on a few TikToks and a Reddit forum, which is initially
00:35:13.440what happened. It was just like a few people tweeted, a few people made TikToks being like,
00:35:17.640I don't know about this American Eagle. It's kind of bizarre. That was all inflated to an
00:35:22.180unimaginable scale by specific people with very specific goals in mind. So should we talk about
00:35:30.340the backlash to the backlash? Yes. Because like I said, in response to this ad, there are some
00:35:36.280TikToks and tweets that start making the rounds where people with like tepid followings on Twitter
00:35:42.200TikTok are criticizing the eugenicist undertones of the advertisement in my opinion correctly but
00:35:48.040do I think there needs to be like national discourse around a jeans ad campaign in this
00:35:53.440current moment when so many other things are happening that are like way more consequential
00:35:57.960in my opinion not really and I didn't like the ad but again I didn't really catch wind of the whole
00:36:04.200thing until I saw prominent conservatives reacting to the online liberals saying that the wokeness
00:36:11.140has gone too far, that once again, Sidney Sweeney will be the death of woke. I don't know about you
00:36:16.220guys, but I just, I started seeing so much more of this once conservatives were telling me that
00:36:22.120people were angry about it. Well, because they did what they always do. It's like the Chris Rufo
00:36:27.500playbook, right? Or the lips of TikTok playbook. It's like, take some little thing, take a few
00:36:31.740examples of leftist sentiment wildly mischaracterized the very nuanced point by the way that they're
00:36:38.660making and then use that to generate outrage and then they just sort of feed this outrage machine
00:36:43.200where it's like the left wants to cancel sydney sweeney for you know the like for being beautiful
00:36:49.300it's like the worst sort of bad faith reading of everything and and conservatives especially fox
00:36:55.260news like this is what they live for this is all they do and once they seize like once they find
00:37:00.860one of these things, especially if it's celebrity related, they will drive it into the ground.
00:37:04.960I do think the digital media and like clickbait journalism like plays a role in all of this too,
00:37:09.800because like they are framing backlash as like this like widespread thing. And then they're
00:37:14.800taking tweets from people with like seven followers where it's not even clear if they're
00:37:18.920like on the left. And then that's like being amplified in this article to potentially millions
00:37:23.380of people as some example of discourse when it's like, is that even real?
00:37:26.260I was reading so many of these articles as I was piecing together this outline of these, like, everything you missed about the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle drama. And all of them, it was like Ben Shapiro was saying this, and Laura Ingram is saying this, and Greg Gutfeld is saying this, and Candace Owens is saying this. And they're all saying it's gone too far, based on criticism from some users on X, formerly known as Twitter.
00:37:50.700and then it'll link maybe it'll link like a single tweet uh you know backlash to the original
00:37:55.540advertisement and it's always someone with like 1200 followers i'm like that would be a lot i feel
00:38:01.280like if it's double digit followers like i'm not convinced that some of these fox news assignment
00:38:05.360editors like aren't making up some of these tweets i i get a little conspiratorial later in my outline
00:38:10.000as we follow this saga so just wait the point about digital media is so true and it's something
00:38:15.760that i think about a lot whenever this happens because i feel like first of all this happens
00:38:19.720regularly. This is a whole playbook. And second of all, when I first started out in digital media
00:38:25.060and I had to write like five articles a day for some website that you've never heard of before,
00:38:30.720because that's like also the BuzzFeed model, you would be assigned to find as many tweets as you
00:38:36.700possibly could about something that they're just simply, the demand was not real. It was not
00:38:41.800actually there. So I have so much experience. Like I would be sitting there on my fourth article of
00:38:47.160the day, making like, I don't know, $20 a day. And I would be like searching on Twitter, like
00:38:54.540needing to find tweets to like fit these quotas. The difference between when like an outlet like
00:38:59.880BuzzFeed does that for the most part, and an outlet like Fox News, they do it with a clear
00:39:05.720agenda. They do it with like a conservative narrative in mind. And then especially right now,
00:39:11.680they have the actual institutional backing to cause like consequences. And when conservatives
00:39:18.700do this, they are often speaking to a status quo that they will then materially benefit from.
00:39:25.880Whereas when like people on the left do this, and I'm thinking about like the articles that I would
00:39:30.420write about like people are offended by something that was honestly probably actually offensive.
00:39:35.880like when I would write an article like that, that article would have no power and it would
00:39:41.440not reflect the biases of people who had authority. But I feel like part of the reason why American
00:39:47.480Eagle made this ad is because like, yeah, their stock jumped because the people who like influence
00:39:53.940the stock market are like more in tune with like a pro eugenics advertising campaign. So like it all0.95
00:40:01.480works out really well it becomes a treadmill of itself on the right because it just reinforces
00:40:07.120the power that they already hold this exact model of faux outrage and faux controversy
00:40:14.280is responsible for like so much legislation and especially like basically the entire
00:40:20.660anti-trans movement anti-trans 100 anti-lgbtq as a whole women's rights porn tech that like
00:40:28.920weird kids online safety stuff, the TikTok ban, which was driven by fake, completely made up fake
00:40:34.600TikTok challenges. I mean, think about how much legislation and transphobic sentiment and
00:40:40.660elections were won off of the myth of litter boxes in bathrooms, in school bathrooms that
00:40:48.520right wing media outlets were alleging were for students who were identifying as cats.
00:40:54.480Taylor, didn't you report on that? I did. And the litter boxes were,
00:40:58.420it was like extra it was like litter bags basically for like uh if somebody had to go to
00:41:02.820the bathroom when they were locked in for a school shooting just crazy and bleak but it reminds me of
00:41:07.980the tiktok stuff too because it's it's just like moral panic fake outrage they know that it's made0.52
00:41:13.820up but it's it's just manufactured outrage and you have these like youtubers and podcasters and
00:41:18.920then fox news and then it trickles like up to the politicians who are basically like creating
00:41:24.700outrage about nothing or about, you know, fractional leftist discourse that's happened
00:41:29.980in a very specific place online. I pulled a bunch of instances of this sort of being whipped up.
00:41:36.900So Brett Cooper, the very famous conservative YouTuber made an hour long video. Feminists1.00
00:41:44.040are crashing out over Sidney Sweeney's good genes. Donald Trump Jr. posted an AI generated
00:41:50.380image of it was like from the sydney sweeney ad campaign but with trump's face on sydney sweeney
00:41:57.140and then fox news starts covering this around the clock like i mentioned in a four-day period they
00:42:01.540talk about this 181 times new sydney sweeney ad accused of being racist and then another segment
00:42:08.220sydney sweeney ad sparks liberal meltdown online it's just like triggered sjw bait type stuff from
00:42:16.080like 2018 like that's just what we're living in now in our entire media ecosystem do you know who
00:42:20.360made a an instagram reel about this uh among all these other people who a mainstay on the pod Lizzie0.93
00:42:27.800Sivetsky of course Lizzie Sivetsky who's gone from like liberal Zionist to just like MAGA culture
00:42:34.960warrior in like the lowest way but she made it a reel where she was like I don't know guys I1.00
00:42:40.340suddenly have the urge to shop at American Eagle now and then she like had her husband film her0.92
00:42:45.400going into American Eagle. Like this kind of stuff also reminds me of how the same kinds of
00:42:51.080campaigns will start against like in the Amber Heard or like the Blake Lively case. They will
00:42:55.680invent controversies out of thin air, launder them through traditional media by creating this
00:43:00.660was literally the PR strategy that like Justin Baldoni used in part to get like hit pieces about
00:43:06.200Blake Lively that would be churned out of places like the Daily Mail. And it would be based on like
00:43:10.480a handful of TikToks, a handful of tweets, no views, no engagement. But like his publicist
00:43:15.500would like send those tweets to like a reporter at one of these tabloids. And then because of like
00:43:20.720the algorithmic treadmill effect, you have all these random content creators. Like why are you
00:43:25.260weighing in on this? It's because at this point, if you weigh in on it, it's guaranteed engagement.
00:43:30.140It is guaranteed placement. It is recommended to people. And so it's like with something like
00:43:34.740the Sydney Sweeney ad campaign, it's like, we're all so sick of it, but influencers will then carry
00:43:39.620that into like stage four which is just like everyone's now trying to cash in on the outrage
00:43:45.480to the outrage to the ad and oh my god and every time this stuff happens and i didn't really talk
00:43:51.340about this on my outline but like i was talking about it with you guys the other day and in our
00:43:55.720in our we have a group chat uh we have a group chat called yappy hour y-a-p-p-y whoa don't dox
00:44:01.340our uh we have a group but like if you go on youtube during any of these cycles it's just
00:44:08.880like every youtube creator and their mother has made a video that's like sydney sweeney it gets
00:44:14.860worse i feel like i've seen a million thumbnails where it's just like someone's face and then it
00:44:21.280gets worse it's over i realized now from doing my own youtube channel that if you put the words
00:44:27.380it's over on any thumbnail it increases the click through like significantly should i put
00:44:33.060it's over next to sydney sweeney's face on this one you you should and it will help performance0.62
00:44:38.340if you guys see it's over in the thumbnail keep your mouth shut
00:44:43.220but it is this like content machine i got the same thing on youtube every twitch streamer's
00:44:50.240got to react to it and that's going to be clipped and like it just becomes this like
00:44:54.420commoditized outrage bait, basically, that everyone's got to hop onto because the algorithm
00:45:01.040rewards that. If you have listened to this podcast a lot, you probably know that I make this show
00:45:08.260myself. I conceive of the ideas myself. I do all the research and outlining myself. I edit myself.
00:45:14.260I do all the production myself. And I love doing that, mostly because I'm a control freak. And the
00:45:19.980idea of giving up any amount of creative freedom gives me anxiety. The downside though is that all
00:45:26.760of that takes a lot of time and sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day to do other
00:45:33.780things that one has to do to live and for me one of those things is cooking. So I like to pass off
00:45:39.420the responsibility not to a chef but to Factor. Factor is a meal delivery service with chef-made
00:45:45.720gourmet meals that make eating well easy. There are so many different exciting and varied meal
00:45:51.320options and the best part is they are all ready to heat and eat in two minutes. I've always said
00:45:57.100that I go for the protein plus menu which if you work out a lot or generally just want a lot of
00:46:03.140protein in your diet they have so many great options there that are way better than just
00:46:08.920meal prepping unseasoned chicken for two weeks at a time. And I know some gym rats are going to be
00:46:14.060in the comments like hey i make chicken better than that i'm sure you do i just don't have the
00:46:18.180time or patience to i love preemptively defending myself from criticism like inside of an ad
00:46:24.180i love the internet if you want to try factor now you can get 50 off your first box at
00:46:31.980factormeals.com slash fruity50 off and use the code fruity50 off that's factormeals.com
00:46:40.540slash fruity50off with the code fruity50off.
00:51:27.340If this was a 300-pound non-binary person, they would be applauding her.1.00
00:51:31.640This ad is the final declaration that we're done doing that shit.1.00
00:51:35.900They don't need to utilize racist dog whistles because they know that they can use a racist1.00
00:51:40.560foghorn and they won't face any consequences for it.
00:51:43.440That's why when I saw the ad, I was like, yeah, this is kind of bad, but also like just turn on Fox News. Like no one's relying on dog whistles anymore. They just say that they hate people of color and they hate queer people.
00:51:54.640And I think that one of the things they relish so much about a moment like this is that to them, and perhaps rightfully so, it represents how like outside the boundaries of Fox News, like you're walking through Times Square, you see this ad.0.93
00:52:09.820They love the ability to have any incursion of their belief system into the ultimate mainstream where it becomes unavoidable. And I think that is something that like drives a lot of their attention and their obsession around this.
00:52:23.680And also worth noting, like, at the end of the day, they're claiming like they're defending Sidney Sweeney. They love her. They're praising her. But this is the same group of people who just like a year prior were smearing and bullying this woman for a bikini picture where she didn't look flawless.
00:52:39.680so it's like they will also turn on her and punish her and discard her as soon as she isn't this like
00:52:46.220beautiful glamorous bombshell and like any woman who the conservative party like momentarily
00:52:51.860embraces is on a very strict expiration date like they're they're not gonna love her forever they're
00:52:57.080just using her to try to worm their way deeper and deeper into the mainstream they also don't
00:53:02.640even really love her because they don't even go to see her movies right the movie that she just
00:53:06.360came out with just bombed at the box office this past weekend she's just a prop for them and and0.88
00:53:11.400she will be discarded as all of these other previous women have been discarded and you know1.00
00:53:17.060she's gonna turn 30 soon they're gonna start saying she's over the hill they're gonna actually1.00
00:53:21.880demonize her for you know embracing her sexuality because of course we only know that only young1.00
00:53:27.960women are allowed to do that even 27 they're probably thinking she's like pushing it there0.95
00:53:32.220were all these gross ai pictures of her like marrying baron trump so they're already envisioning1.00
00:53:37.560her as like her next role is to be like a conservative politician's wife and if she
00:53:42.920doesn't do that it's over i want to tell you my conspiracy theory okay so on august 4th sydney
00:53:49.680sweeney attended a screening for her upcoming movie americana actually it was upcoming when i
00:53:54.820wrote this outline but it did just come out and it bombed because these people don't actually
00:53:58.200supporter but as she was walking into the theater swarmed by paparazzi one person yelled at her
00:54:06.880stop the ad that is being racist she was heckled let me show you
00:54:12.500who's saying that we don't know who's saying it and it was never revealed who's saying it
00:54:26.560And my wild conspiracy theory, welcome to the conspiracy theory pod.
00:54:45.340Well, so the video was originally shared by TMZ.
00:54:48.860And I'm not saying I'm not accusing TMZ of planting this person there.
00:54:53.260I just think that there is a very real possibility based on the way that we know that these media cycles go and that we know how much money there is to be made off of the continuation of them.
00:55:04.300It is my theory, unsubstantiated, that someone was like, here, random person or maybe a random person who works for this company or whatever, stand there and yell at her.
00:55:15.500This doesn't even, first of all, this doesn't even feel like a real heckle.
00:55:18.120If you were genuinely invested in like the belief that this is a racist eugenicist advertisement and this was like a hill that you were dying on and really advocating about, she says, stop the ad that is being racist.
00:55:34.480It doesn't even feel like a real heckle.
00:55:45.760at this point, I think hundreds of protests. Certainly I covered, I think, something like
00:55:49.44080 protests in 2017 alone, back when it was Trump 1.0. We had them multiple times a week
00:55:54.580and I was covering politics. Every single one of those protests, and even today you see them,
00:55:59.780these conservative people, they're just like clickbait, basically. They're there to pretend
00:56:04.800to be woke liberals, to get on the media, to parody woke liberals so that they can generate
00:56:10.140viral content. And this is a very well-known strategy. So when I see a video like that,
00:56:16.700I think it's probably one of those types of people where it's like, that person is a conservative
00:56:21.540that's trying to keep it all going. I'm with you. Thank you. Thank you. It's a deep state.
00:56:27.320Sure enough, this one video that TMZ posted of her getting heckled, heckled,
00:56:33.060is posted by libs of TikTok. Chaya Rechik wrote, Sydney Sweeney was heckled and called racist for
00:56:37.820her American Eagle ad. A beautiful white woman appearing in an ad is racist, according to1.00
00:56:41.480leftists. Unreal. Richard Hananiah, who is the right wing blogger, he posted the video of her0.84
00:56:47.800being heckled and wrote that all Democrats need to forcefully denounce the heckler.
00:56:54.160They love a condemn. They all want everyone to condemn everything all the time.
00:56:58.820The other thing that this always brings me back to is like peak SJW Tumblr culture,
00:57:04.880which so much of the modern right is just an elongated response to and it's so crazy because
00:57:11.440like what he's saying there when he's like you need to condemn this person he is mocking and
00:57:15.920parodying when an actual like conservative politician will say something abhorrently
00:57:23.680racist or misogynistic or ableist or whatever and people will rightfully call out the party and and
00:57:30.200tell them they need to like condemn these viewpoints they're mocking it or like is a
00:57:34.080rapist or something yes yes it is so annoying because it's like ultimately the people who were
00:57:40.780leading the sjw charges of the mid-2010s like me age 16 on like my parents desktop computer
00:57:48.040i didn't have any structural power you have the white house you are like instrumental in all of
00:57:55.620these larger issues and so it is just so pathetic that to this day they are still clearly so mad and0.66
00:58:03.400so captivated by like whatever progressive momentum there was on the internet like 10 years0.91
00:58:10.280ago. And I think the fact that we don't know who that person is is interesting. Because until we
00:58:16.060know who that person is, I'm 100% assuming it's some conservative or some person that was a random
00:58:20.960person that was like paid off by a conservative. I'm saying Sky News Australia, the conservative
00:58:26.940cable news outlet they did a segment on this world's gone mad sydney sweeney heckled at movie
00:58:34.320premiere following gene's ad i'm like there's so many people making money off of this who's to say
00:58:39.660it was one person it was one person how easily can one person be planted i'm just saying okay
00:58:44.980that's enough conspiracy theorizing on the a bit fruity podcast i don't like to wade into those
00:58:48.660waters i'm about to go use that facial recognition stuff and figure out who this lady is she's gonna1.00
00:58:55.660to be like the top comment on this video like hey guys so sorry that was actually me1.00
00:59:02.220did your camera just die yes now i know that sound
00:59:09.000can you give me two minutes yeah so the new york times put out a really interesting piece that
00:59:18.380actually taylor brought to my attention originally which kind of quantified everything we've been
00:59:24.000talking about about this outrage cycle and by the way just i want to mention here i talk a lot of0.78
00:59:29.080shit on the new york times and it is a piece of shit institution but i want to clarify that there0.98
00:59:33.460are you know individual but they did one good article basically there are individual reporters1.00
00:59:40.460and journalists within the institution who do put out good work from time to time and and this was
00:59:46.440one of those times i'm going to link this piece in the episode description but i clipped together
00:59:52.420There's some quotes that kind of synthesize what they're trying to say.
00:59:56.220The boiling social media frenzy over the American Eagle campaign has been driven,
01:00:00.660at least in part, by the public's seemingly insatiable interest in Ms. Sweeney.
01:00:04.820But it also shows how, on today's internet,
01:00:07.400a controversy can sometimes be described as widespread when it isn't.
01:00:11.620Instead, people pushing an agenda can cherry-pick from tens of millions of posts or videos
01:00:16.580uploaded to social media every day to make their case.
01:00:19.660Nearly three quarters of posts that were critical of Miss Sweeney or the ad had fewer than 500 views, data shows.
01:00:27.500Many pro-Trump users amplified the critical posts in reposts and reshares, driving even more attention to posts that would normally reach only a few thousand users.
01:00:36.580The tide began to shift on July 27th, days after the ad came out, when large right-wing
01:00:42.520accounts such as Libs of TikTok began reposting critiques of the American Evil campaign,
01:00:47.280mocking them as examples of triggered liberals. Libs of TikTok and another right-wing account
01:00:52.380shared a video from a left-wing TikTok user who had 70,000 followers on the platform.
01:00:57.440Their reposts were seen more than 4.4 million times on Twitter, far eclipsing the reach of
01:01:02.680the original post. Then came the podcasters. Perhaps prompted by the viral success of posts
01:01:07.840that defended the American Eagle campaign while attacking left-wing viewpoints, popular podcast
01:01:12.520hosts Charlie Kirk, Clay Travis, and Michael Knowles jumped in on the topic, devoting increasing
01:01:17.780amounts of airtime to what they described as evidence of a broken-brain Democratic culture.
01:01:22.680Elected Republicans soon followed. And then it goes on. But I just think this is a really
01:01:27.900interesting study that they ran, identifying how these reverse funnels always work, where a few
01:01:33.380posts from relatively unknown people online about a topic that the vast majority of people wouldn't
01:01:38.780organically care much about are picked up by these right-wing influencers and then the mainstream
01:01:43.680media pundits and the politicians and whipped up into some, you know, broad indictment of the left,
01:01:49.820even before the vast majority of the left has even heard about it.
01:01:53.780Totally agree. I'm glad the New York Times did some journalism.
01:01:57.900When this article came out, it got a decent amount of traction on Blue Sky, where everyone
01:02:02.540hates the New York Times. And there was a lot of people dunking on it in the sense that they were
01:02:08.560like, this has been the pattern for a long time, which is true. But I'm still glad that they wrote
01:02:14.540about it. And I thought they wrote about it really well. Because if you're going to learn something
01:02:18.580from how conservatives accelerate their rhetoric, you have got to drill down over and over and over
01:02:24.160again every time they try to do this like it cannot be overstated how much of a ruse it is
01:02:29.820how much of it is media manipulation like it just can't be said enough and also like we who like
01:02:35.000cover the internet and live on the internet and breathe the internet like we know how these
01:02:39.560culture wars are created if you're listening to this podcast there is a good chance that you
01:02:44.220understand how this process goes every single time since gamergate but like a lot of people
01:02:49.560who read the new york times don't understand that people like my parents don't understand
01:02:53.100how this stuff happens. And they, you know, see this stuff start cropping up across the media of
01:02:57.640like, Democrats take a stand against beautiful women. And they just think it's like something
01:03:02.860that is actually happening. So my outline kind of wraps up with like, what is the bigger picture
01:03:09.700here, which we kind of touched on earlier, but I want to rant a little bit about what I think the
01:03:15.360bigger picture is here. And I wrote this out. While the right wing media is engaging you in
01:03:20.820a culture war about Sidney Sweeney, Donald Trump is scorching the earth to make sure that nobody
01:03:26.840accesses the details of his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. While the right-wing media is
01:03:31.820engaging you in a culture war about Sidney Sweeney, your free speech and tax dollars are going out the
01:03:37.120window to support a genocide, which is broadly unpopular across the political spectrum in the
01:03:42.860United States. While the right-wing media is engaging you in a culture war about Sidney Sweeney,
01:03:47.020the MAGA administration is keeping you uneducated, is keeping you poor, is keeping you sick,
01:03:52.900because materially improving your life would be in direct opposition to helping the billionaires
01:03:59.380they are bought out by. And so there's a real darkness here for me, because while it's fun to
01:04:05.580argue about celebrities, or at least, I don't know, it used to be, there's a reason why all of MAGA's
01:04:11.480media proxies from Fox News to Brett Cooper are giving this so much airtime, despite not a single
01:04:17.960Democratic politician, by the way, or prominent member of the left talking about this at all.
01:04:23.720And it's because culture wars are all the right has to keep you in the fold. They won't even
01:04:29.600pretend to do anything about wealth inequality or social services or anything that would make
01:04:34.600your life actually better. So they just jangle these, you know, Sydney Sweeney shaped keys in
01:04:41.000front of your face and keep you angry enough at the woke lift that you'll never wonder why you
01:04:46.040don't have free health care. Amen. But I also don't want people to do the thing that I see
01:04:54.060online too, where it's like somebody tries to have a nuanced thought or perspective, especially on
01:04:58.920something to do with women or celebrity culture. And then they reply like, oh, well, this is a
01:05:03.820distraction from what Donald Trump is really doing. Like, because it's like, yes, it is a
01:05:08.140distraction, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth like dissecting and having a nuanced thought
01:05:12.460on, or as you said, like writing about in the New York times and revealing this strategy,
01:05:16.480if it's covered, it should be covered that way. I think the distraction is the debate. Like,
01:05:22.580you know, is it a problem that she's hot or whatever? Like that's the distraction, but like
01:05:26.600having a thoughtful nuance take, or honestly this podcast, like this is not part of the
01:05:31.420distraction machine. Like this is like doing essential work, like, you know, dissecting the
01:05:36.240discourse like pulling apart kind of why these campaigns happen and what they hope to achieve
01:05:40.240and i do think that that coverage is valuable yes just to be clear when brett cooper makes an
01:05:45.380hour-long youtube video about sydney sweeney it is a distraction but when we make an hour-long
01:05:50.040youtube video about sydney sweeney we are doing such important work i can be self-aware i promise
01:05:58.280the last thing that i had here on my outline was do you guys know rt the russian
01:06:06.200outlet? Yes. It was paying Tim Pool? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Can you explain what RT is? RT is Russia
01:06:13.280Today or it used to stand for Russia Today. It's basically state media from Russia and they run a
01:06:18.480lot of propaganda campaigns. It was the Department of Justice revealed a few months ago that they
01:06:23.360were secretly paying a bunch of right-wing influencers, including Tim Pool and Benny
01:06:26.560Johnson, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. That's
01:06:32.100millions of dollars a year to make content that fed into whatever they were trying to push rt which
01:06:37.620i think is now just rt yeah they rebranded it did used to stand for russia today but i think they
01:06:42.280want to have you know more u.s involvement so being called russia today would stands for read this
01:06:47.700they posted slop content about this sydney sweeney great genes controversy and they wrote
01:06:59.360liberals freak out over sydney sweeney's great genes and you know it's just like interviewing
01:07:05.060triggered libs on the street about sydney sweeney but i'm like why do you think russia today the
01:07:11.560russian state-owned propaganda network is posting about this like fake sydney sweeney controversy
01:07:17.900in fact rt regularly weighs in on u.s based fake culture wars including the current one where
01:07:25.680people are apparently mad on the right that there are male cheerleaders in the NFL, which is just
01:07:31.360like a wild thing to be mad about in 2025. George W. Bush was a male cheerleader. So was Ronald0.57
01:07:35.860Reagan. No way. Yeah. Yeah. So many icons. We really are getting the 80s back. Yeah. Yeah,
01:07:41.940exactly. Exactly. Of what concern are these like American culture wars to Russia and Russian
01:07:49.100state owned media? Like, does nobody find it weird? And I think that's an example that most
01:07:54.780people can be like, yeah, they have no business posting about Sidney Sweeney's jeans advertisement.
01:08:00.480Why do they care about this? And I would encourage everyone, especially maybe if you were
01:08:05.200a conservative, sent this podcast by a liberal family member or something like,
01:08:10.260think about how American media can do that as well. And influencers can do that as well.
01:08:15.660You know, everyone has the ability to exploit fake culture wars for nefarious purposes to get0.98
01:08:20.760you to look away from like the fact that our president is a pedophile.
01:08:23.340And they can use these culture war topics to reinforce the bigotries that help Trump get0.97
01:08:30.660elected. They can reinforce homophobia. They can reinforce misogyny. They can reinforce
01:08:35.780cultural conservatism. They can kill two birds with one stone, essentially.
01:08:39.740And after everything is said and done, American Eagles stock is down. So what did we learn today?