Miss America 2026 winner Cassie Donegan won’t let her critics get the best of her.

The beauty pageant titleholder, who took home the Miss America crown in September 2025, performed “God Bless America” at the July 14 MLB All-Star Game in Philadelphia — and was met with a lot of criticism regarding her appearance.

In an interview with Yahoo published Monday, July 20, she said that “cruelty or bullying” is “never acceptable.”

“Within an hour of the MLB All-Star Game ending, comments were appearing across nearly every social media platform,” Donegan, 28, explained. “They had nothing to do with my performance or my singing and everything to do with my appearance.”

Donegan said that the online negativity “continued to multiply” and “within 24 hours, people were literally telling me that I should end my life to put the general public out of its misery of having to look at me.”

“It was shocking to realize that multiple people thought it was OK to say something like that about another person for any reason,” she told Yahoo. “It was overwhelming.”

Donegan said that singing “God Bless America” at the All-Star Game was “such an extraordinary moment,” adding that the ballpark was “completely packed” and people were “singing along” with her.

“As both an artist and Miss America, it felt like the culmination of so much work. I was grinning from ear to ear,” she said. “I couldn’t help but smile.”

Making the moment particularly meaningful is that her father is a disabled veteran and “was there and able to experience it with me.”

“For me, this was so much more than getting to sing at a game,” she said. However, the special moment suddenly led to an “online spiral” of negativity.

While Donegan said the “commentary hasn’t stopped, unfortunately,” she explained that people’s words don’t only hurt who they’re directed at — they hurt everyone.

“When a woman’s appearance becomes the subject of public ridicule, every woman and girl reading it receives a message about how the world might someday speak about her,” she said. “She is being taught that she may have to quantify her worth according to someone else’s opinion.”

“I don’t need an apology,” Donegan concluded. “I don’t need anyone to suddenly decide that they think I’m beautiful. I would simply hope that the next time they have the opportunity to tear someone down, they make a different choice.”

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