Which former Miss USA/Miss Teen USA contestants later retracted or disputed their 2016 statements, and what reasons did they give?

1. The original 2016 accounts and how they were reported

In October 2016 BuzzFeed published allegations from former contestants in the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant saying Trump had walked into dressing rooms while contestants — some as young as 15 — were changing, a report later summarized and scrutinized by outlets including PolitiFact and CNN; PolitiFact noted the BuzzFeed pieces quoted several women, some anonymously, and that Trump’s campaign denied the allegations without providing disproof ^[2].

2. Who later disputed or softened the 2016 narrative

Victoria Hughes, who held the Miss Teen New Mexico title in 1997, publicly said later that reports were exaggerated and emphasized that chaperones had instructed contestants to cover up, framing the events as less sensational than some coverage suggested; that statement appears in subsequent summaries of the debate over the 2016 reporting ^[1]. PolitiFact’s review of the episode also highlighted that multiple accounts were anonymous and that discrepancies in sourcing complicated a definitive public answer, which underpins why some former contestants pushed back on how the story was presented ^[2].

3. What reasons were given when contestants disputed the reports

Those who disputed the characterizations argued not that nothing happened but that the reporting overstated or miscast the circumstances: Victoria Hughes cited the presence of chaperones and warnings to cover up as essential context that, in her view, made the situation less clear-cut than presented ^[1]. PolitiFact’s analysis supported caution about the claims because several sources were anonymous and because the campaign denial was not substantiated either way, leaving ambiguity that some witnesses used to justify their pushback against sensationalized accounts ^[2].

4. Apologies versus retractions — the difference in the public record

Notably, other high-profile pageant controversies from 2016 produced apologies rather than retractions — for example, Miss Teen USA 2016 Karlie Hay apologized for past racist tweets and framed them as youthful mistakes, which the Miss Universe Organization characterized as unacceptable yet reflective of being “in a different place” years earlier ^[3]. That pattern—apology for past conduct versus formal retraction of an allegation—appears across the sources: the record shows at least one contestant disputing the dressing-room coverage’s framing, and other controversies resolving through apology rather than factual withdrawal ^{[3] [1] [2]}.

5. Limits of the available reporting and why uncertainty remains

The public record compiled by BuzzFeed, PolitiFact, CNN and later summaries contains a mix of named and anonymous testimony and a campaign denial but does not contain formal, universal retractions from all original sources; therefore it is impossible from these sources to claim a comprehensive list of every contestant who changed or retracted a 2016 statement, and the available named pushback that exists centers on claims of exaggeration and contextualizing details like chaperones ^{[2] [1]}.

6. Two viewpoints and the hidden incentives in play

One viewpoint treats the 2016 BuzzFeed accounts as serious allegations that required independent investigation and public scrutiny; the other sees some later contestant statements—like Victoria Hughes’s—as corrective, motivated either by a desire to temper public perception or by the limits of memory and anonymity in decade-old recollections; both perspectives are visible in the sources, and PolitiFact explicitly flagged the mixed sourcing and campaign denial as reasons for continued ambiguity ^{[2] [1]}.