Sydney Sweeney Handles Hack Journos Better Than Most GOPers

If weak-kneed Republicans are looking for any pointers on how to deal with America’s propaganda media, they might want to check out actress Sydney Sweeney’s latest interview.

Earlier this week, the Euphoria star sat down with GQ’s Katherine Stoeffel to discuss her upcoming film, Christy. According to IMDb, the movie “[t]ells the story of Christy Martin, the most successful female boxer of the 90s.”

While asking Sweeney questions about Christy was part of the interview, it’s clear that Stoeffel had another agenda in mind prior to sitting down with the young actress. Namely, she sought to get Sweeney to grovel and apologize to unhinged leftists who threw a bizarre temper tantrum in response to her American Eagle ad campaign earlier this year.

After initially dancing around the subject for some time, Stoeffel finally asked Sweeney to address the freak-out, and if she was “surprised by the reaction.”

“I did a jean ad,” Sweeney said. “I mean, the reaction definitely was a surprise, but I love jeans. All I wear are jeans. I’m literally in jeans and a T-shirt like every day of my life.”

Unsurprisingly, Stoeffel then pivoted to President Donald Trump, who, in an August Truth Social post, came to Sweeney’s defense amid the left-wing mob’s attacks against her. Seemingly responding to reports that the actress is a registered Republican in Florida, the president wrote, “Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying off the shelves.’ Go get ‘em Sydney!”

Clearly seeking to generate a soundbite of her attacking Trump, Stoeffel asked The White Lotus star about the Truth Social post. She said, “That just seems to me like a very crazy moment for anyone, and I wondered what that was like?”

Not taking the bait, Sweeney calmly replied, “It was surreal.”

That answer apparently didn’t satisfy Stoeffel’s rabid hunger for a more partisan response. Further abandoning any masquerade as some kind of nonpartisan journalist, the GQ writer then injected her own perspective into the mix. More specifically, she told Sweeney, “I would probably feel, like, thankful that somebody had my back in public, and conveniently, some very powerful people had my back in public.”

“I wondered if you felt that way?” asked Stoeffel.

Once again, Sweeney refused to play Stoeffel’s game. After contemplating for a moment, the young actress simply said, “I don’t think … It’s not that … I didn’t have that feeling, but I wasn’t thinking of it like that … of any of it. I kind of just put my phone away. I was filming every day. I’m filming Euphoria, so I’m working, like, 16-hour days, and I don’t really bring my phone on set, so I work and then I go home and I go to sleep. So, I didn’t really see a lot of it.”

Seeing that her gambit wasn’t working, Stoeffel switched strategies. She seemingly attempted to try and scare Sweeney into feeding left-wing grievance culture and appeared to insinuate that, unless she distanced herself from figures like Trump, her career would suffer.

“You’ve made a really good case for keeping your thoughts and your life separate from that work. But the risk is that, you know, there’s a chance that somebody will get some idea about what you think about certain issues and feel like, ‘I don’t want to see Christy because of that,’” Stoeffel said. “Do you worry about that?”

Responding with poise, Sweeney said, “No. No. If somebody is closed off because of something they read online to a powerful story like Christy, then I hope that something else can open their eyes to being open to art and being open to learning, and I’m not going to be affected by that.”

The cherry on top, however, came when Stoeffel felt compelled to “give” Sweeney “an opportunity” to discuss leftists’ insane criticisms of the American Eagle ad. The GQ writer summarized these untoward attacks as leftists saying, “maybe specifically in this political climate, like, white people shouldn’t joke about genetic superiority.”

“I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear,” Sweeney replied.

Notice that at every stage of her interrogation, Stoeffel tried to all but force Sweeney into bowing down before the left-wing rage mob. And — more importantly — at every stage of her response, Sweeney refused to play along.

That Sweeney — a young actress in an industry extremely hostile to diverging thought — would have the courage to decline to engage in the left’s outrage theatrics is both courageous and impressive. Far more courageous and impressive than the cowardly behavior displayed by most Republican officials in their interactions with legacy media “reporters.”

All too often, many GOP politicians will do the exact opposite. Instead of refuting the host’s dishonestly framed “questions” and calling out such hackery when it rears its ugly head, these Republicans acquiesce, thereby allowing the media to control the conversation and ingrain their garbage (and untrue) narratives even further into the American psyche.

But, as Sweeney has shown, handling these hacktastic journos isn’t that difficult. It just takes fortitude and the willpower to refuse playing by their rules.

Unfortunately, too many Republicans possess neither of those things. They’re gutless, feckless cowards who care more about being liked by the propaganda media seeking to banish them into political irrelevancy than standing up for their voters and the country writ large.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood