The woman who went viral for her warm interaction with Elon Musk at Donald Trump’s address to Congress says she was not “flirting” with the billionaire and said the scrutiny of her has been “awful.”
Heather Valentino, an aesthetician from Pennsylvania, also said the intense speculation since the speech last week had been difficult for her business and family as jokes about her becoming Musk’s next “baby mama” quickly spread on social media.
“It was funny at first,” Valentino told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday evening. “And then it changed. And then it became awful. My information was released and then it was just nonstop.”
Heather added that she had never met Musk before, and didn’t even know she’d be sitting beside him at the event, saying she was put next to the DOGE chief “by chance.”
“It’s all quite ridiculous, actually,” Valentino said.
Heather became the object of speculation after a clip of the tech billionaire offering her a bottle of water, which she accepted, garnered millions of views on X. Heather said on CNN it was an innocent exchange that was blown out of proportion.
“I did not know Elon Musk. There wasn’t flirting,” Valentino said. “I think we talked a couple of times. It was just—that’s the shots and that’s the videos that were aired and all the rest that I was talking to everyone else around me, those were not aired.
“And when I stood up with Elon Musk, I mean, I wasn’t going to stay seated,” Valentino continued. “So when everyone else got up, obviously I got up as well. It wasn’t like I was, you know, schmoozing or flirting. It wasn’t that at all.”
When Collins asked about the “harassment” Valentino subsequently faced, Valentino said she had not yet been able to return to work.
“It’s been quite awful,” she said. “Quite awful for my clients, quite awful for myself, quite awful for the people that I work amongst with, and for my business. It hasn’t been good.”
Musk responded to one of the viral videos last Wednesday, posting just a crying laughing emoji.
