Former Miss Teen USA Contestant Is Not Happy J.D. Vance Used Her Video

In August, J.D. Vance took a break from bungling doughnut-shop photo ops to try to diss Kamala Harris with an old viral video from 2007. “BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview,” he tweeted alongside a video showing a Miss Teen USA pageant contestant struggling through the answer to a question about education and geography. Even coming from a guy who thinks it isn’t “normal” for women to care about abortion and is deeply offended by women who don’t procreate, the attempted joke still struck many as stunningly misogynistic. Now, it turns out the contestant in the video is also not happy that Vance dragged her face back into internet discourse.

BERMAN: Last night you posted a clip from Ms Teen US 2007 -- Caitlin Upton. When you posted that, were you aware she thought about committing suicide for the attention that received?

JD VANCE: No, certainly not.

B: Would you like to apologize?

V: I'm not going to apologize pic.twitter.com/tn7FYTS3v4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 30, 2024

The woman, former Miss South Carolina Teen USA Caite Upton, told People that “it’s a shame that 17 years later this is still being brought up.” She added, “Regardless of political beliefs, one thing I do know is that social media and online bullying needs to stop.”

If Vance had done some research, he might have already known Upton wouldn’t want the video recirculated — in 2015, she told New York Magazine that she lost friends and was bullied, both in person and online, for two years after her clip took off. “I was very, very depressed,” she said, and “had some very dark moments where I thought about committing suicide.” When presented with this info on CNN, Vance declined to apologize for the tweet, insisting that we should “try to have some fun in politics.” Given how bad he is at making jokes, I’m thinking maybe not?

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