Since Kamala Harris and Tim Walz rose to the top of the Democratic ticket, their campaign has proven to be light on its feet in delivering wickedly funny, instantly viral blows on social media, wielding memes as an effective political tool. Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who can’t effectively order a donut, apparently decided that it was time to see what he could dig up in the ol’ meme mines on the occasion of Harris and Walz sitting for their first on-camera interview Thursday evening.
“BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview,” he tweeted Thursday before the interview aired, alongside a clip from the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant, when South Carolina’s Caitlin Upton stammered through an answer to a question from Friday Night Lights star Aimee Teegarden about one-fifth of Americans failing to locate the country on a map.
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The jab failed to connect even at face value: Responses poured in berating Vance for making fun of a young woman and resurfacing a moment that in later years she admitted had her contemplating suicide. “It was awful, and it was every single day for a good two years,” she told New York Magazine in 2015.
On Friday, Vance was asked by CNN’s John Berman if he was aware of the impact that the clip had had on Upton’s mental health. He said that he hadn’t been, and that “my heart goes out to her and I hope that she’s doing well.”
“Politics has gotten way too lame, John, way too boring,” Vance added. “You can have some fun while making a good argument to the American people about how you’re going to improve their lives.”
When pressed by Berman about whether he’d like to apologize to Upton, Vance declined.
“John, I’m not going to apologize for posting a joke, but I wish the best for Caitlin,” he said. “I hope that she’s doing well and, again, what I’d say is one bad moment shouldn’t define anybody and the best way to deal with this stuff is to laugh at ourselves.”
In a statement to Vanity Fair, Upton said, “It’s a shame that, 17 years later, this is still being brought up. There’s not too much else to say about it at this point. Regardless of political beliefs, one thing I do know is that social media and online bullying needs to stop. For anyone else going through something similar, please visit EndCyberBullying.Org and WhiteFlag as resources.”
A touch of context takes Vance’s attempt at humor from a painful misstep to a headfirst tumble off the side of a rhetorical cliff. For one thing, Donald Trump owned the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants from 1996 to 2015. For another, Trump was accused of (and denied) walking in on teen beauty queens changing backstage at the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant. As former Miss Vermont Teen USA Mariah Billado told Buzzfeed News in 2016, “I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here.’”
Some of the contestants that year were as young as 15. Billado said she remembered Trump saying something like, “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before.” Some other contestants anonymously corroborated her account, while others said they didn’t have a memory of it happening.
