After causing an uproar over a photo post on her now-private Instagram account, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin’s actress-producer wife, Louise Linton, apologized on Tuesday for making a controversial comment at a user on the social media platform.
“I apologize for my post on social media yesterday as well as my response,” Linton said in a statement Tuesday. “It was inappropriate and highly insensitive.”
The apology was regarding a controversial comment in response to a user comment on a photo she posted showing her stepping off a government plane with her husband.
She wrote in the photo’s caption, “Great #daytrip to #Kentucky! #nicest #people #beautiful #countryside, and went on to include hashtags of various luxury designers she was wearing: “#rolandmouret pants #tomford sunnies, #hermesscarf #valentinorockstudheels #valentino #usa.”
The user wrote in response to her photo, “Glad we could pay for your little getaway. #deplorable” — a comment that Linton didn’t seem to appreciate.
“Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our day ‘trip’ than you did.
Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you’d be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours.”Though Linton has been in the public eye for some time, many are unfamiliar with who she is. Here are a few things to know:
1. The Scottish-born actress had a privileged upbringing: In 2015, Linton told Flavour magazine that she spent her weekends at Scotland’s Melville Castle, which her family’s trust acquired in 1993, according to the castle’s website.
“It was an idyllic childhood spent mostly outdoors with all the animals. My siblings and I zoomed around on little motorbikes, kayaked, fished, spent time racing through the woods shooting each other with B.B. guns. It was a very normal life,” she said. “The castle is magical and filled with so much history.”
2. She’s no stranger to controversy: In 2016, Linton came under fire after publishing a memoir about her gap year in Zambia, which critics said contained falsehoods about the country and conflicts in the region. Others also took issue with the general tone of the book, saying that Linton portrayed herself as a “white savior.”
“I know that the skinny white girl once so incongruous in Africa still lives on inside me,” she wrote in the book, according to the Washington Post. “Even in this world where I’m supposed to belong, I still sometimes feel out of place. Whenever that happens, though, I try to remember a smiling gap-toothed child with HIV whose greatest joy was to sit on my…
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