Organizers of the Ms. America pageant say Ms. Nevada was stripped of her crown for violating social media rules. Katie Williams says her conservative values are really at the root of the move. "I just don't understand how you can censor someone ... when I'm not even really saying anything that's bad," the 29-year-old fitness instructor from Las Vegas says in an 8-minute video posted to Facebook, announcing she will not be competing in Saturday's Ms. America pageant in Long Beach, Calif. The pageant claims Williams was asked to keep a Facebook account "representing Ms. Nevada State 2019" separate from her personal account—in which she appears in a Trump 2020 hat, calls antifa a "terrorist" group, and claims Democratic socialists and feminists "are ruining this country"—as the rules state this is "a No Politics pageant."
Williams did maintain separate accounts. However, Ms. America CEO Susan Jeske says Williams' public personal page was filled with pageant references, making it "a pageant page," per NBC News. "It's her pageant, she can do whatever she wants," allows Williams, but she sees "hypocrisy" in action, calling out posts, apparently from fellow contestants, about the Human Rights Campaign. "For them to not say anything about that and then for them to get mad at me for supporting my current sitting president, I couldn't even believe it," she says. "I feel like if I had more liberal views, less conservative views that this wouldn't even be an issue." Per Newsweek, Williams' rep says she "made every effort to comply with the requests of the pageant." However, the pageant notes she refused the "reasonable request" of a phone conversation. (More beauty pageant stories.)
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