Caroline Manzo, 58, is not a “rat” — The Real Housewives of New Jersey alum made that very clear during the Oct. 28 episode of her sons Albie and Christopher’s podcast, Dear Albie. “Rat” is the word Teresa Giudice, 47, called her former co-star during her interview with Andy Cohen, which aired on Oct. 27, to suggest that Caroline was the whistleblower responsible for getting Teresa and Joe in trouble! The spouses both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and bankruptcy fraud in 2014 — Teresa served a little more than 11 months behind bars and was released in Dec. 2015, while Joe sat in prison between March 2016 to March 2019.
“This is not the first time [Teresa’s] made this claim. Those are big words. Those are very big words. So once in a while, you gotta take the bully, pull ’em up by the shirt, pull ’em up to your face and say, ‘This is the reality. This is life. I am going to clear things up for you.’ And that’s what I’m doing,” Caroline declared on her sons’ podcast. She previously starred on RHONJ between Seasons 1-5.
At this point, Caroline really took aim at Teresa. “She has a narcissistic personality…I get it. I see through her. She has no moral compass. She really doesn’t. She has said things to people that are completely fabricated,” the former Bravo star continued. But she could find humor in Teresa’s extreme shade, after her past co-star claimed Caroline “led that crooked life.”
“My initial thing was, ‘What the F is she…what?’ And then you have to laugh at somebody like that, because she is clearly grasping at straws,” Caroline said on the podcast. Reassuring listeners that she doesn’t hail from a criminal background, Caroline continued, “What’s my crooked life? I have a husband that has been busting his a** for the past 40 years, working 16-hour days six days at week at almost 60 years old. We just paid off our mortgage, congratulations to us. And guess what? We did it the old-fashion way, with a 20-year loan, and by blood, sweat and tears we paid it off,” Caroline said. She continued to defend her name, adding, “[Teresa’s] right. We couldn’t be more opposite. And that pleases me. So the irony of that statement is not lost on me, and I think she’s grasping at straws, and I think she’s delusional, and I think she’s trying to throw mud and hoping it sticks on any which wall that will catch it, but it’s not gonna work.”
As for why Caroline predicted Teresa and Joe would go to prison — a clip that Andy resurfaced in the Oct. 27 interview — she explained, “First of all, I had no knowledge of anything they’ve ever done in their life, you know? At the time, Teresa had had an abundance of legal issues and it was all over the press, and the writing was on the wall that something was going to happen because the indictment was so big. So you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out.”
Teresa’s very public accusation did catch her by surprise, however. “My chin was on the floor,” Caroline confessed in an EXCLUSIVE interview with HollywoodLife. However, Teresa sounded quite convinced that Caroline had snitched while speaking to Andy in her tell-all interview. “Could she have anything to do with what happened to Joe and I? Is she a rat? With her saying that? Those words would never come out of my mouth, regarding anybody. Maybe [she called the feds]! Those words would never come out of my mouth,” Teresa vented, in response to Caroline’s foreshadowing of the mother of four’s legal woes.
