Ex-beauty contestant condemns JD Vance for use of embarrassing video

A 2007 Miss Teen USA contestant who drew widespread mockery because of a stuttering response to a question that she fielded at the competition has said it is “a shame” – and also condemned “online bullying” – after JD Vance recirculated a video of her difficult moment to attack Kamala Harris.

Meanwhile, the Republican nominee for vice-president in November’s election has ruled out apologizing to Caitlin Upton, who has spoken openly about how she previously contemplated suicide at the height of the ordeal revived by Vance.

Related: ‘Dangerous and un-American’: new recording of JD Vance’s dark vision of women and immigration

Upton went viral for the wrong reasons 17 years earlier when – while competing on national television for the Miss Teen USA crown – the actor and pageant judge Aimee Teegarden asked her why she believed an estimated 20% of Americans would fail to find their own country on a world map.

“I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because, um, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps,” replied Upton, then the 18-year-old representative of South Carolina. “And I believe that our education like such as South Africa and the Iraq and everywhere, like, such as, and I believe that they should … our education over here in the US should help the US, should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries – so we will be able to build up our future.”

Host and actor Mario Lopez had barely finished deadpanning “Thank you very much, South Carolina” over the audience’s polite applause before detractors descended on Upton, especially online. An August 2007 piece from the online publication Salon titled “Miss dumb blond USA? Our national embarrassment over a South Carolina teenage contestant’s world knowledge” summarized the reaction to Upton’s verbal flub at a pageant which Donald Trump owned – along with Miss Universe and Miss USA – from 1996 to 2015, the year before he won the presidency.

Upton later told New York magazine that some college baseball players taunted her cruelly when she attended a party at one point, and someone mailed her a note suggesting she “go die for [her] stupidity”. She described how the harassment drove her into a depression and prompted her to have suicidal thoughts.

But she said her family and other loved ones ultimately helped her overcome the painful experience. She eventually pursued a real estate career, got married and had two children.

Upton in the interim also reportedly demonstrated her support online for Trump’s presidency, including his lies that voting fraudsters unduly orchestrated his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

She had mostly faded from the public consciousness when Trump’s running mate thrust her back into it Thursday, shortly before CNN aired Harris’s first news network interview since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.

Vance’s X account republished a video clip of Upton’s infamous 2007 remarks along with the caption, “BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview.”

Upton on Friday made clear that she did not appreciate Vance’s post.

“It’s a shame that 17 years later this is still being brought up,” Upton wrote on X, just a short time before deleting her account from the social media platform. “Regardless of political beliefs, one thing I do know is that social media and online bullying still needs to stop.”

Vance in turn appeared Friday on CNN, dismissed the video of Upton as little more than “a 20-year-old meme” and urged Upton to “laugh it off”.

“Politics has got way too lame,” Vance said to anchor John Berman. “You can have some fun while making an argument to the American people about improving their lives.

“I’m not going to apologize for posting a joke – but I wish the best for Caitlin and hope she’s doing well.”

The entire sequence is unlikely to ease Republicans’ concerns over Vance’s performance during the campaign as polls show Trump trails Harris.

He has repeatedly grappled with scandals over his past declarations about women and what he perceives their role to be in American society, especially after he characterized Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies” and excoriated a teachers union president for not having “her own” children.

Furthermore, the Guardian reported Saturday that Vance gave a 2021 podcast interview in which he said professional women had chosen “a path to misery” by prioritizing their work over having children. Those comments had largely gone unnoticed previously.