What did former Miss Teen USA contestants say about Donald Trump’s behavior and which outlets reported their accounts?

1. The pageant context and Trump’s own remarks

Trump owned the Miss Universe organization — which included Miss Teen USA and Miss USA — from 1996 to 2015, a fact cited across retrospective reporting linking his behavior to his role as pageant owner ^{[6] [2]}. Reporters also highlighted a 2005 Howard Stern interview in which Trump said he sometimes walked into contestants’ dressing rooms unannounced, an on-record remark that media tied to the contestants’ later allegations ^[6].

2. The 1997 Miss Teen USA contestants’ accounts

In 2016 and revisited in later reporting, a group of women who competed in the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant told reporters that Trump walked into the dressing room while some contestants — they said as young as 15 — were changing; initial aggregation of those claims was reported by BuzzFeed and summarized by fact-checkers such as PolitiFact ^{[5] [1]}. Vice revisited and amplified that allegation in 2024, repeating the core claim that Trump “waltzed through the dressing room” while teen contestants were changing ^[2]. Rolling Stone’s timeline likewise recounts Mariah Billado’s memory of seeing a man in the dressing room and other contestants’ confirmations from that year ^[3].

3. Additional Miss USA-era allegations (2001 and others)

Separate from the 1997 Miss Teen USA accounts, at least one former 2001 Miss USA contestant told The Guardian she was naked with a roommate when Trump allegedly “burst into the room” during rehearsal; The Guardian reported corroboration from another contestant who said the account had been shared at the time ^[4]. Reporting compiling allegations across years has presented multiple former Miss USA contestants’ claims that Trump entered dressing rooms while contestants were in various states of undress ^[6].

4. Which outlets reported these accounts

Key outlets that publicly reported or reprinted contestants’ accounts include BuzzFeed (initial compilation of the 1997 allegations as cited by PolitiFact), Vice (a 2024 feature on the 1997 allegations), Rolling Stone (a 2020 timeline that summarized pageant-related claims), The Guardian (the 2001 Miss USA account), and fact-checking organizations such as PolitiFact that summarized and contextualized those reports ^{[5] [1] [2] [3] [4]}. PBS/independent programs and other outlets covered related accusations by Miss USA contestants about sexual misconduct more broadly, citing named individuals such as Samantha Holvey in different contexts ^[7].

5. Contradictions, corroboration and limits of the reporting

Coverage recorded clear divisions among pageant participants: some former contestants said they remembered Trump entering dressing rooms, while others said they did not recall such incidents or doubted they occurred; PolitiFact noted several contestants either didn’t remember or dismissed the possibility, and also emphasized that absence of recollection is not disproof of the allegations ^[5]. Multiple outlets relied on personal testimony and contemporaneous recollections; the reporting does not present photographic or forensic evidence in the cited pieces, and fact-checkers caution about the limits of what can be independently verified from decades-old memories ^{[5] [1]}.

6. How outlets framed motive and public impact

Different outlets framed these allegations through varied lenses: investigative and culture outlets like Vice and Rolling Stone emphasized a pattern that fit other documented lewd remarks by Trump, while fact-checkers and some mainstream outlets cataloged who said what and who did not recall the events to temper conclusions ^{[2] [3] [5]}. The reporting showed implicit editorial agendas — advocacy or cultural critique in some pieces versus precision and verification in fact-checking — and each outlet’s framing influenced public perception of how strong the evidence appeared ^{[2] [5]}.