It’s been almost a week since America fell in love with Melissa Carone, aka “Rudy Giuliani’s Wine Lady.” She was supposed to be his star witness at a Michigan hearing on alleged voter fraud. But her testimony was such a trainwreck that it and she went viral, costing Giuliani and company whatever credibility they had left. (Which admittedly wasn’t much.) Inside Edition landed her for her first public interview, in which she told television audiences that she wasn’t drunk — the kind of everyday situation many of us find ourselves in regularly.
Looking quite different from what she did during her notorious testimony, Carone strongly denied accusations (or at least jokes) that she was tanked. “I wasn’t drunk,” a far, far more calm Carone told Inside Edition. “I would swear under oath that I wasn’t drunk.”
The widespread belief that she had tied one off was exacerbated by the parody of her on last weekend’s SNL. She was played by Cecily Strong, who at one point appeared next to Kate McKinnon’s Giuliani brandishing a martini glass. But the portrayal left Carone the opposite of offended.
“I loved it,” Carone said of the spoof. “I think she did a great job. I thought it was very funny. She looked just like me.” She also doesn’t take offense to others mocking her aggressive personality. “I’m not hurt. That’s my personality.”
Carone wasn’t even upset by Giuliani, who appeared mere inches away from her without a mask, mere days before testing positive for COVID-19 and wound up being hospitalized. (Another member of the bumbling Trump legal team, Jenna Ellis, tested positive the same day the Carone interview dropped.)
“I’m not concerned at all,” Carone said of what turned into a super-spreader event. (She also didn’t wear a mask.) She also has no intention of going into quarantine, despite a local mandate saying that anyone present during the hearing should immediately do so.
And Carone addressed her bizarre criminal past, namely her allegedly sending sexually explicit videos to her fiancé’s ex-wife, resulting in an obscenity charge. She pled guilty to a lesser charge, which was later dismissed. She didn’t deny those charges, but she did say Giuliani never inquired about her sketchy past before making her his star witness in a hearing meant to sow doubts in an election otherwise considered historically safe.
You can watch the full interview on Inside Edition’s site.