Miss USA says affordable health care is a 'privilege,' not a right

LAS VEGAS — The reign of the newly crowned Miss USA is off to a rocky start.

Even before Kara McCullough, Miss District of Columbia, was announced the winner, social media was in a frenzy over her responses during the Q&A segment of the broadcast.

McCullough, a 25-year-old physical scientist at the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was asked whether affordable health care for all U.S. citizens is a right or a privilege.

“I’m definitely going to say it’s a privilege,” she said. “As a government employee, I am granted health care, and I see firsthand that for one to have health care, you have to have jobs.”

McCullough also set fingers a-tweeting when she said she did not consider herself a feminist.

McCullough, a woman of color, said she was worried about how audiences would view her natural hair in a sea of straight and teased pageant locks.

"When I chose to wear my hair curly, I was afraid. I didn't know how people were going to accept it, if anyone was going to be receptive to it at all, but I felt like a Grecian goddess on stage!" she told Refinery 29.

But it was her viewpoints that ended up as the topic of debate rather than her hairstyle:

McCullough is a 2013 graduate of South Carolina State University, a historically black college in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

She follows the reign of Deshauna Barber, the former Miss USA who also hailed from D.C.

The organization, once owned by President Donald Trump, was sold in 2015 to talent agency and entertainment company WME/IMG.

Cox Media Group