How a podium and a stage mic bound Katie Zacharia and Caitlin Upton across two decades of viral public judgment
The beauty queen Caitlin Upton and the press secretary Katie Zacharia. Screen shots: nbcnews/YouTube and abcnews/YouTube
An old story unexpectedly went viral again. Back in 2024, we wrote about Miss Teen USA finalist Caitlin Upton returning to the news because of JD Vance. Yesterday, the traffic numbers showed a sharp jump in views for that original piece. And it’s still garnering interest. At first, we could not pinpoint what drove the sudden surge. Then, our news feed revealed the answer. Across American social media, a new rivalry erupted, keenly pitting White House press secretary Katie Zacharia against 2007 Miss Teen USA finalist Caitlin Upton. The sudden comparison proved irresistible to the internet, as users dissected side-by-side clips to draw striking—and unsparing—parallels between the two. We know both fumbled, but the settings are different. One is a White House briefing room and the other a pageant stage, but both share one thing in common: the microphone.
The comparison is brutal, as it nearly always is online. But what stuck out to us is that it is less about the actual content of what Ms Upton said in 2007 than what she has come to represent in American popular culture, even nearly two decades later. There is no denying that her answer was confused and, therefore, garbled, but viewers watched to take some delight in seeing someone trying to assemble thoughts in real time while visibly overwhelmed by the occasion. Flubs are as much a pageant tradition as the crown. Less so in the White House briefing room. Yet the parallel remains inescapable, as vividly demonstrated during the recent press briefing of Katie Zacharia. Her debut proved that even under the highest-stakes spotlight, a slip of the tongue remains the great equaliser. The Juris Doctor qualification, even without the holder called to the bar, confers no immunity against an open microphone, nor does it elevate her above the hazards of the pageant stage. She remains every bit as vulnerable as a crown contender.
Flubs are as much a pageant tradition as the crown
Our impression of the debut still searching for its footing was established well before Ms. Zacharia fielded a single policy question (of which there were none). It was quite a turnout—the suit! Online, by contrast, there is often a collapse of everything into a single meme and parallels are easily drawn. In the scroll-sphere, you don’t have to understand two different people when you can just turn them into a single, low-res alignment chart. Or, “see another Caitlin Upton answer? Don’t remember her? Here you go”. That is, to us, the modern American political-information ecosystem at work. One awkward greeting plus a few stumbles, followed by a short briefing, and suddenly half the internet starts reaching into its archives for the most famous cultural proxy for shameful awkwardness. Over there, they are not observing political analysis; they are watching a digital populace desperately scavenging the clearance rack of nostalgia, just to feel something. Nuance is an expensive luxury; lazy historical shorthand, by contrast, is entirely free and available in infinite supply.
People are generally quite forgiving when you are called up without warning and then you speak on the spot and trip. But when the reader recites from prepared remarks, the standard changes. A stumble points to a different problem: if this was prepared, why did it sound unprepared? In Ms Zacharia’s opening address, there was also an odd and unmistakable moment: sighing or catching her breath before saying “Venezuela”. Pauses carry meaning whether we want them or not. An intake of breath, a swallow of excess saliva, or a sigh-like pause before a word, even if innocent, can create an impression—that the speaker has momentarily lost the rhythm of the text. The memorable press secretaries often have a rather paradoxical quality: they disappear into the role. You stop watching them and start listening to the argument they’re making, but not Karoline Leavitt and it seems, now, Katie Zacharia. The bungles are perhaps not important. Yet collectively they become important because viewers wonder if she is comfortable behind the podium. Ms Zacharia wanted her debut scripted, but people were amused by the unscripted moments. You really can’t get more pageant-perfect than that.
