I’m a star in my job, says wife of Trump politician
SHE is best known for being married to the US Secretary of the Treasury.
But Scot Louise Linton has said she is sick and tired of being known as a politician’s wife.
Miss Linton, whose husband is investment banker Steven Mnuchin, said she refuses to define herself by the man to whom she is married.
Instead, she insists she is a fulltime filmmaker who has two roles – one working in Los Angeles and the other in the political world of Washington DC. Miss Linton, 38, has appeared in horror films and had minor TV roles in the television series CSI: NY and Cold Case.
Raised in Edinburgh, where her family own Melville Castle on the city’s outskirts, she married Mr Mnuchin in 2017.
Before serving in Donald Trump’s cabinet he was a hedge fund manager and investor and he has three children from a previous marriage.
In an article in the inaugural US edition of The Spectator, Miss Linton says: ‘My husband is a temperate, restrained and serious politician. I am passionate, creative, hot-blooded – everything you wouldn’t traditionally expect from the “wife of” a cabinet member.
‘But the term “wife of” assumes that my identity as a woman is chiefly defined by who I am married to. Which it is not. People’s definition of what a cabinet spouse ought to be should evolve with the times.
‘The floodgates have opened – from President Trump to AOC [New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] Washington is flourishing with non-establishment types.
‘Being an individual and simultaneously a cabinet spouse has been difficult for me. I’m trying to walk the tightrope but sometimes I feel a bit wobbly.’
Miss Linton, whose previous roles include horror films Cabin Fever and Intruder, is now putting together a new film. She said: ‘My life on each coast is radically different from the other. Tonight I’m in DC, having supper with Jared and Ivanka (whom I like very much, by the way). Last week I was in LA, hosting a dinner for friends in my garden. A patchwork of LAbased artists, musicians, designers, actors, directors and writers. We talk about cinema, art, great books. For obvious reasons we don’t talk politics.’
Miss Linton goes on to detail current projects with her own production company, including her latest film, Me, You, Madness, in which she writes, stars and directs.
She adds: ‘I’m proud of the film but, like all filmmakers, I fear criticism – how dare the “wife of” the secretary of the Treasury make such a brazen film? I’m a little vulnerable.’
Miss Linton ran into controversy when she published a memoir in 2016 that included details of a gap year she spent in Zambia in 1999. She claimed she had spent a night in the bush hiding from rebels, describing herself as a ‘skinny white muzungu with long angel hair’, terrified of what they might do to her.
The Zambian High Commission in London and others criticised the book for its inaccuracies and promotion of the false narrative of ‘the white saviour’. Miss Linton withdrew it from sale and apologised for causing offence, promising to donate all profits from it to charity.
Now she has launched a charity for children and animals, called Perfect Storm.
Speaking about her mother Rachel Hay, who died of breast cancer at 53 when Miss Linton was 14, she said: ‘My mom once wrote, “Remember the gift of the precious present. Cast off yesterday’s doubts and tomorrow’s anxieties. Life is taking place now”.’