The Beauty Queens of MAGA World
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In January, Abbie Stockard, the reigning Miss America, turned up at Donald Trump’s inauguration wearing a MAHA gown. When it came time to select a cabinet, Trump tapped South Dakota’s 1990 Snow Queen, Kristi Noem, as secretary of homeland security. Anna Kelly, a former Miss State Fair of Virginia, was appointed deputy press secretary. Last month, when the president needed someone to push through criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director, another beauty queen came to the fore: Lindsey Halligan. The one-time Miss Colorado semifinalist did the job after Trump pushed out the top federal prosecutor for eastern Virginia and elevated her.
Halligan’s turn in the spotlight has paled beside the glow of another pageant veteran. Erika Kirk, the widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was Miss Arizona USA in 2012. At her husband’s funeral last month, she demonstrated preternatural poise addressing a stadium-sized crowd, extolling a traditional view of marriage in which he was the family’s spiritual leader while she maintained the home.
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To their proponents, pageants are a training ground for young women to succeed in a world beyond the swimsuit competition. They learn discipline and poise and how to think on their feet. The life of a Miss America—crossing the country to appear at events, speaking in public, developing a platform and smiling for endless pictures—isn’t so different from that of a campaigning politician.
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Margot Mifflin, author of the 2020 book “Looking For Miss America,” believes pageants and MAGA are “consonant” in their inclination to maintain the status quo. “MAGA culture is rewarding a certain kind of woman that beauty pageants reward,” Mifflin said. Both “revere conventional, traditional representations of women.”
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Trump, another Atlantic City hotelier, would become the pageant world’s king when he bought the organization that owns the Miss USA, Miss Teen USA and Miss Universe competitions. If Miss America is prim and studious, competing for university scholarships, think of Miss USA as the racier sister. Or as Mifflin put it, “It’s a little more of a skin show.” More than once, contestants complained about Trump going backstage when they were undressed—something he did not deny in a 2005 interview with Howard Stern. “I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed and ready, and everything else, and, you know, no men anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant, and therefore I’m inspecting it,” he told Stern. “You know they’re standing there with no clothes…And you see these incredible looking women.”
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https://www.wsj.com/politics/the-beauty-queens-of-maga-world-23bf590b?st=TC5CCA&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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They're busy making bacon for us. 
and how wonderful to be reminded of his beauty contest days. 