JD Vance Shares 2007 Miss Teen USA Clip to Mock Kamala Harris

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance compared Vice President Kamala Harris to a teenage beauty pageant contestant on Thursday. This followed Harris’ first interview with a professional journalist since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. Vance posted a clip from a 2007 Miss Teen USA contest where a contestant struggled with a question.

Vance shared the clip on social media, writing, “BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview,” alongside a video of 18-year-old Caitlin Upton stumbling through an answer about why some Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a map.

Upton, an honor student, was heavily mocked for her response back in 2007. She later explained that she froze during the pageant. “Personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on a map,” Upton said in an interview after the event.

Vance’s comparison of Harris, a presidential candidate, to a teenage beauty pageant contestant highlights underlying gender stereotypes. Beauty pageants often carry the false impression that participants are ignorant or trivial, making Vance’s comparison noteworthy. While Upton’s faltering answer became headline news at the time, she has since stepped out of the public eye.

In her CNN interview on Thursday, Harris underscored that her “values have not changed,” although she has moderated some of her earlier progressive stances, such as those on the Green New Deal. “I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter, to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time,” Harris said.

Harris is only the second woman to be nominated for president by a major political party. Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked her intelligence and suggested she advanced her political career through sexual favors. Vance’s mocking post appears to align with such personal attacks.

Vance has a history of making controversial remarks. In 2021, during his Senate campaign, Vance referred to Harris and other top Democrats as “childless cat ladies” and said they were miserable because they didn’t have children. Recently, on Wednesday, he stated she “can go to hell.”

It’s likely not coincidental that polling data shows women voters favoring the Democratic ticket by up to 16 percentage points. Reproductive healthcare has been a key campaign issue, and Trump has tried to bridge the gap by tempering the Republican Party’s anti-abortion rhetoric and pledging support for IVF fertility treatments, which have been threatened by right-wing court decisions.

Source: HuffPost