A video of a beauty pageant contestant struggling to answer a question about world geography authentically shows new White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia when she was younger.
During her Oct. 13 debut, new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia answered three questions from outlets typically friendly to U.S. President Donald Trump, stumbling over parts of those answers, and ended the press conference after just 14 minutes.
Many social media users mocked Zacharia’s performance afterward. Some posts included a video of a young beauty pageant contestant (archived), supposedly Zacharia, struggling to answer a question.
The video, along with the claim that it showed Zacharia, was shared in several popular X posts (archived) and on Instagram (archived). Snopes readers searched the site and sent emails wondering if the video really was of Zacharia.
The woman in the video was not Zacharia, but instead a 2007 Miss Teen USA contestant, Caitlin Upton. Therefore, we’ve rated this claim miscaptioned.
The video has gone viral before, as the internet culture website Know Your Meme has documented, and many of those who shared it with a caption identifying the woman as Zacharia appeared to have done so jokingly. However, responses to the posts indicated that at least some people unfamiliar with the video believed the captions were serious.
The question Upton, who was Miss South Carolina Teen USA that year, struggled to answer was about a large number of Americans being unable to identify the U.S. on a world map. She didn’t really answer the question; Upton stumbled over her words while referencing people in the U.S. who didn’t have maps, education, South Africa, Asian countries and building up the future.
Video of Upton’s attempt to answer the question has been available on YouTube (archived) since Aug. 24, 2007, the date of the competition.
A few days later, Upton appeared on the “Today” show and said she was overwhelmed when she was asked the question and made a mistake. While on the show, she gave a more focused answer to the question she was originally asked during the contest:
Personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on a map. I don’t know anyone else who doesn’t. If the statistics are correct, I believe there should be more emphasis on geography in our education so people will learn how to read maps better.
Several years later, Upton spoke publicly about how Upton struggled following the viral fame of her appearance in the Miss Teen USA contest. In 2015, she told Teen Vogue that she suffered from depression and even suicidal thoughts due to bullying, harassment and hate directed her way both online and offline.
In 2024, Vice President JD Vance, then a candidate for the office, posted the clip again to X to mock then-Vice President Kamala Harris for her performance in a CNN interview. At that time, Vance was criticized for bringing attention back to a moment that had Upton contemplating suicide for a time, according to Vanity Fair.
At the time Upton competed in the pageant, she was 18 years old.
In 2007, Zacharia was graduating from Pepperdine University, putting her outside the age range of the Miss Teen USA contest for that year.
