Louise Linton, (photo, right) the millionaire wife of the millionaire Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, (photo, left) bragged about how much they pay in taxes and accused a critic of being “adorably out of touch.”
Prior to 20 January 2017, there was a lamentable lack of social-media scandals involving our public servants in the Federal government. Then Donald Trump moved into the White House and, of course, everything changed. Now, we’ve come to expect that the President of the United States will go on late-night rants when he is feeling piqued, attacking everything from North Korea to media outlets to retailers who stopped selling his adult daughter’s handbags, occasionally deploying ALL CAPS to signal his seriousness or scare quotes to underscore his contempt. Now, perhaps unsurprisingly, the tone set by the president seems to have trickled down to his Cabinet members and their spouses, too. For instance, whereas in times past, the wife of the Treasury secretary might have felt an obligation to not lash out at an Instagram commenter in a diatribe boasting about her vast wealth, now we have this:
That’s Louise Linton, the wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, attacking a woman who wrote “glad we could pay for your little getaway” after Linton posted a photo Monday night about wearing Hermes, Valentino, Roul & Mouret, and Tom Ford on an official government-chartered day trip to Kentucky. For those of you keeping score at home, Linton manages to both complain about how much she sacrifices in taxes while shaming the woman for not earning as much; suggesting that she and her husband, who made a significant amount of money at Goldman Sachs before running a “foreclosure machine”, have given more to their country than their haters ever could. Then there’s strategic use of the curled bicep emoji, the blowing kisses face, and Lololol; and, of course, the coup de grâce: “you’re adorably out of touch.” The woman Linton responded to was later identified by The New York Times as Jenni Miller, a mother of three from Portland, Oregon.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that Linton, whose husband is currently attempting to orchestrate a massive tax cut that would shift trillions to the rich, has accidentally made a case for more progressive taxation. In June, ahead of her nuptials to Mnuchin, the actress sat down with Town & Country to talk about all of the many diamonds she would be wearing for the big day, including, but not limited to, her very large engagement ring, her diamond wedding band, a diamond bracelet, two pairs of diamond earrings, a couple of diamond necklaces, a pair of diamond earrings she had turned into a cocktail ring, and a diamond brooch of two parrots kissing a pearl. (Nor is it the first time she’s found herself at the center of controversy, having self-published a memoir about her gap year in Africa that was widely mocked as a stereotype-laden white-savior fantasy, and which resulted in calls for Zambia to demand an apology from Scotland, where Linton was born and raised.)
After Linton’s Monday night tirade went viral, she deleted the post and made her account private. Presumably, at some point this week, she’ll vent to the President about all the jealous “haters and losers” who just don’t get why the rich are better. “I think my post was just five or six words, and she had to go on basically a rant about it to make herself look more important and look smarter, better, richer—all those things,” Miller, a Democrat, told The Times. “It just seemed wholly inappropriate.”
The Treasury Department said that Mnuchin and Linton are paying back the government for transportation costs when she travels with him on official business, an expense that hopefully won’t hit her Hermes budget too hard.
After Linton’s Monday-night tirade went viral, she deleted the post and made her account private. Presumably, at some point this week, she’ll vent to the President about all the jealous “haters and losers” who just don’t get why the rich are better. “I think my post was just five or six words, and she had to go on basically a rant about it to make herself look more important and look smarter, better, richer, all those things,” Judith Miller, a Democrat, told The Times. “It just seemed wholly inappropriate.”
The Treasury department said Tuesday that Mnuchin and Linton are paying back the government for transportation costs when she travels with him on official business, an expense that hopefully won’t hit her Hermes budget too hard.
Rico says he thinks she's so unadorably out of touch...
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