WASHINGTON — The wife of the Treasury secretary on Monday night took a page from President Trump’s social media playbook for punching down. 
 
 Louise Linton, the labels-loving wife of Steven Mnuchin, replied condescendingly to an Instagram poster about her lifestyle and belittled the woman, Jenni Miller, a mother of three from Portland, Ore., for having less money than she does. 
 
 The brouhaha began when Ms. Linton posted a photograph of herself disembarking a military jet emblazoned with official government markings. She had joined her husband on a quick trip to Kentucky with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. 
 
 “Great #daytrip to #Kentucky!” Ms. Linton, 36, wrote under the photograph. She then added hashtags for various pieces of her expensive wardrobe, listing #rolandmouret, #hermesscarf, #tomford and #valentino. 

 Actress Louise Linton, who married Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in June, posted and then deleted a photo of herself and her husband as they walked off an Air Force jet Monday that was akin to a fashion shoot tagging the designers she was wearing. 
 
 After facing criticism from an Instagram user, Linton, who is married to the man who is fifth in the presidential line of succession, responded to the user with a long comment filled with classist attacks. Linton has now taken her Instagram account private, not allowing Instagram users who don’t already follow her to see her account. 
 
 In the now-deleted post, Linton and Mnuchin are photographed deplaning the military jet (according to Linton’s Instagram post, they were landing in Kentucky), which Mnuchin is required to use for official government travel. The caption on her Instagram post read: “Great #daytrip to #Kentucky! #nicest #people #beautiful #countryside #rolandmouret pants #tomford sunnies, #hermesscarf #valentinorockstudheels #valentino #usa” 
 
 Louise Linton/Instagram 
 
 Linton has tagged designers she appears to be wearing in previous Instagram posts, but it’s unusual, if not unprecedented, for the spouse of a Cabinet secretary to promote the designers she is wearing in any social media post, much less one that includes a photograph of herself with her husband while on government travel. 
 
 An Instagram user, called “Jenni M,” responded to Linton’s post and said, “Glad we could pay for your little getaway. #deplorable” 
 
 Linton’s response to Jenni M came after she appeared to examine Jenni M’s Instagram feed, making note of Jenni M’s family and children. 
 
 “@Jennimiller29 cute!....Aw!! Did you think this was a personal trip?! Adorable! Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol. 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? 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. You’re adorably out of touch. Thanks for the passive aggressive nasty comment. Your kids look very cute. Your life looks cute. I know you’re mad but deep down you’re really nice and so am I. Sending me passive aggressive Instagram comments isn’t going to make life feel better. Maybe a nice message, one filled with wisdom and hunanity [SIC] would get more traction. Have a pleasant evening. Go chill out and watch the new game of thrones. It’s fab!” 
 
 Linton on Tuesday released a statement apologizing for her “inappropriate and highly insensitive” Instagram post and her response to Jenni M, according to CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond. 
 
 Just in: Louise Linton apologizes for Instagram post & response to commenter in statement --> pic.twitter.com/Ww22HFQuni — Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 22, 2017 
 
 Linton’s Instagram post comes at a time when her husband is under attack by some of President Donald Trump’s loyalists for his lack of populist credentials. Linton’s out-of-touch post isn’t likely to help Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs executive who served as the finance chair of Trump’s presidential campaign. 
 
 Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you’d be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours. You’re adorably out of touch. Louise Linton's Instagram post 
 
 A spokesman for Mnuchin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Instagram user that Linton attacked also did not respond to a message asking for comment. 
 
 This is not Linton’s first encounter with controversy. In 2016, Linton came under fire for her self-published memoir, In Congo’s Shadow, which detailed her time as a student in Zambia. In July of 2016, Zambians, and their advocates, criticized Linton’s portrayal of Zambia as a war-torn, poverty-stricken nation with wild animals running through the streets. Linton was also criticized for portraying herself as a white savior. Under pressure, Linton withdrew the book from sale and pledged to give any proceeds to charity. The actress actually dressed as Marie Antoinette in a 2007 episode of “CSI: NY.” 
 
 Mnuchin and Linton were in Kentucky on Monday to tour Fort Knox, which holds the federal government’s $200 billion gold reserves. 
 
 Yes it's true, Louise Linton once played Marie Antoinette. https://t.co/MuOMX12VLm pic.twitter.com/rUhVZLUp7N — Yashar Ali (@yashar) August 22, 2017 
 
 This article has been updated to include Linton’s apology. 
 
 Follow Yashar — or send him a tip — on Twitter: @yashar 

 Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, made headlines after posing with Mnuchin in front of a sheet of new $1 bills Nov. 15. This wasn't the first time she caused controversy. (Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post) 
 
 Before Louise Linton’s bizarre Instagram exchange Monday and before her lavish June wedding to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the wealthy Scottish actress wrote a memoir about her gap year in Zambia in the late 1990s. 
 
 The book, self-published last year, was condemned by the Zambian government, scorched by critics as a “white savior” fantasy and ultimately removed from sales, according to the Telegraph and the Scotsman. 
 
 If Linton, 36, was trying to put such controversy behind her, she appears to have done the opposite. 
 
 On Monday, Linton bragged on Instagram about flying on a government plane with her husband to Kentucky. After backlash, she apologized on Tuesday. 
 
 In the Instagram post that stirred criticism, she listed the slew of fashion brands she wore on the trip, tagging them by name. In response to a critical comment about her picture, the treasury secretary’s wife disparaged the woman, boasting about her extreme wealth. 
 
 “You’re adorably out of touch,” she said in her snarky response. “Your life looks cute” 
 
 [Treasury secretary’s wife boasts of travel on government plane, touts Hermes and Valentino fashion] 
 
 As news of the exchange circulated, social media users were quick to remember last year’s Zambia memoir debacle, along with the hashtag it had prompted: #LintonLies 
 
 Linton’s book, “In Congo’s Shadow,” described how, as an 18-year-old, she “abandoned her privileged life in Scotland” in 1999 to live in Zambia for six months, a period that she described as “a living nightmare.” She wrote about becoming a “central character” in the “horror story” of Congolese war of the late 1990s, terrified of what the rebels across the border might do to the “skinny white muzungu with long angel hair.” (Muzungu is a Bantu term often used to refer to wealthy white people.) 
 
 She added: “Now that I’m a grown woman living in California and pursuing a very different dream — as an actress and film producer — I know that the skinny white girl once so incongruous in Africa still lives on inside me. 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 lap and drink from a bottle of Coca-Cola.” 
 
 The memoir, a 290-page account written with Wendy Holden, included what many Zambians characterized as cliches and misrepresentations of Africa. Linton wrote of the “inky blackness deep in the Zambian bush” and the “brutal tales of rape and murder.” 
 
 “With a cheery smile, I’d waved goodbye to Dad and jumped on a plane to Africa without researching anything about its tumultuous political history or realising that my destination — Lake Tanganyika — was just miles from war-torn Congo,” Linton wrote in an excerpt published in the Telegraph. 
 
 One publication, OkayAfrica, referred to Linton as “delusional” and called her account the “the dumbest, most egregious piece of writing on Africa of the 21st century.” 
 
 The memoir, it turns out, was also littered with inaccuracies, as Zambians pointed out on social media. 
 
 The Zambian High Commission in London denounced Linton and her “falsified” memoir for depicting the country as “savage.” It accused Linton of “tarnishing the image of a very friendly and peaceful country.” 
 
 “It is a historic fact that Zambia has never been at war but rather has been home to thousands of refugees fleeing wars from other African countries,” a statement from the Zambian embassy read. “The Congo war has never spilt into Zambia.” It also condemned how Linton identified children with HIV and published their photographs in the book. 
 
 “We join many others who have taken time to condemn the stereotyping of Africa and Zambia as a backward country in a jungle, thinking which is not of the 21st century,” the embassy said. 
 
 Lydia Ngoma, a Zambian poet and writer who read the book, told NPR many of Linton’s facts were wrong. 
 
 “Child soldiers in Zambia? Rebels violently crossing over into Zambian borders? Those are such shocking allegations that any Zambian will tell you did not happen,” she says. “She mixes Zambia, Congo and Rwanda so many times leading to the generalization of Africa as ‘one big country’ — something we have been trying to fight for a while now,” Ngoma said. 
 
 “She paints herself as a ‘savior’ in her memoir while the rest of the characters are either racists, or ignorant creatures.” 
 
 One Twitter user wrote at the time: “The only thing missing from the @LouiseLinton story is Tarzan and Mowgli.” 
 
 In response to the public outrage, Linton apologized on Twitter, saying she was “genuinely dismayed and very sorry to see that I have offended people.” Her Twitter account was later deleted but numerous news outlets captured screenshots, including the BBC and CNN. 
 
 “I was reflecting and remembering a personal experience as an idealistic teenager that changed my life many years ago,” she said in another statement, the Scotsman reported. “I mistakenly thought I could inspire readers by sharing my memories of my time in Africa. The sad truth is that my intent behind the book was to share an empathetic attitude but the result was the exact opposite.” 
 
 The Telegraph followed with its own apology, withdrawing the excerpt from its website. It also announced that Linton agreed to remove the book from sale and “give the profits to charity.” 
 
 The article “mistakenly implied that the conflicts in Congo and Rwanda had spilled over into Zambia, that Zambia was a war-torn country in 1999 and that armed rebels had crossed Lake Tanganyika to Zambia that year,” the Telegraph statement read. “Other claims of inaccuracy were also made.” 
 
 Social media users who recalled Linton’s memoir last year appeared less than surprised about her most recent controversy: 
 
 Shocking that person who wrote famously gross article about Africa (https://t.co/9YXfdZWoZi) also turns out to a person who acts like this. https://t.co/QesSYeTa4J — Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) August 22, 2017 
 
 What? Louise Linton in trouble again? After her controversial portrayal of Zambia in a vanity book, who'd have thought? #SheIsATireFire https://t.co/fKusTwciUr — Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) August 22, 2017 
 
 Linton, who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, attended Fettes College, an elite Scottish boarding school, according to her online biography. She reportedly grew up in a luxurious castle in Dalkeith that she claimed was “haunted.” 
 
 The actress and producer has appeared in roles in television shows such as”CSI: NY” and “Cold Case” and the movies “Intruder,” “Lions for Lambs” and Cabin Fever.” Her biography speaks highly of her philanthropic work and roles on numerous boards, touting Linton as a “passionate advocate for people and animals.” 
 
 Linton has appeared in a number of magazine spreads — including a topless shoot for Maxim in 2009. 
 
 One of these magazine features — a particularly unusual one — was shared widely leading up to her June wedding to treasury secretary Mnuchin. In an extravagant spread in Town & Country, Linton shared her large collection of jewels, including many she said were gifts from Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs exec. 
 
 “You never really own a diamond,” she said. “You just get to keep it for a while before it begins a new journey with someone else.” Of a pair of earrings, she said: “I love how easy pearls are to wear with anything and everything.” 
 
 [The best quotes from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s fiancee on her jaw-dropping jewels] 
 
 Her wedding to Mnuchin, 54, at the Andrew Mellon Auditorium proceeded in a similar posh fashion. She wore a full-skirted gown with a plunging neckline and “heaps of diamonds,” as The Washington Post’s Emily Heil reported. It was the third marriage for Mnuchin and the second for Linton. 
 
 Vice President Pence officiated. Guests included President Trump and his wife, Melania, and first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband and White House adviser, Jared Kushner. Other Trump administration officials and members of the Washington elite were in attendance. 
 
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 Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, made headlines after posing with Mnuchin in front of a sheet of new $1 bills Nov. 15. This wasn't the first time she caused controversy. (Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post) 
 
 U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s wife, Louise Linton, boasted of flying on a government plane with her husband to Kentucky on Monday and then named the numerous fashion brands she wore on the trip in an unusual social media post that only became more bizarre minutes later. 
 
 When someone posted a comment on Linton's Instagram picture that criticized the way Linton touted the trip, the treasury secretary's wife swung back hard, mentioning the extreme wealth she and her husband control. 
 
 “Did you think this was a personal trip?!” Linton wrote on her Instagram page, responding to the person who had written “glad we could pay for your little getaway.” 
 
 (Linton's Instagram account was later made “private” so that it could not be publicly seen). 
 
 Louise Linton, wife of US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, just turned her Instagram private after posting this (h/t @skenigsberg) pic.twitter.com/beakVnAhhu — Margarita Noriega (@margarita) August 22, 2017 
 
 Linton continued in her response to the critic: “Adorable! Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol. 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? 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.” 
 
 Linton added, “You’re adorably out of touch … Thanks for the passive aggressive nasty comment. Your kids look very cute. Your life looks cute.” 
 
 This ignited a raft of controversy and drew national media attention for Linton. The spouses of cabinet members are often shielded from public scrutiny, but they also tend to keep a low profile. The spouses of recent Treasury chiefs rarely traveled on official business with their husbands, and there is little precedent for a social media fight like this. 
 
 Linton's Instagram episode came in the midst of a strange period for Mnuchin, who two days earlier sent a letter to his former Yale University classmates explaining why he would not resign from office. His former classmates at Yale had called on Mnuchin to step down because of comments President Trump made following a killing in Charlottesville, Va. at the scene of a violent rally held by white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. Trump's comments after the rally expressed some sympathy for some of the people marching with the white supremacists. 
 
 In the statement Mnuchin issued one week after the Charlottesville death, he said he condemns "the actions of those filled with hate and with the intent to harm others." Mnuchin's statement stood out in part because other members of Trump's cabinet issued statements condemning the white supremacists almost immediately after the violence. 
 
 Mnuchin is playing a central role in the White House's effort to overhaul the tax code and raise the debt ceiling, and the recent distractions have the potential to overshadow his work in those areas. 
 
 The fashion companies Linton “tagged” in her Instagram post were Hermès, Roland Mouret, Tom Ford and Valentino. 
 
 Mnuchin and Linton have been married for two months. Mnuchin is a Hollywood producer and former banker. 
 
 The bizarre exchange came the day Mnuchin flew to Louisville to try to make the case for Congress to overhaul the tax code. He particularly stressed how the tax changes would help middle-class Americans, although Democrats have alleged the Trump administration wants to pass large tax cuts that benefit the wealthy and multinational corporations. 
 
 Typically, Treasury secretaries only fly government planes when they go on international trips. They usually fly on domestic carriers when they are traveling inside the country. 
 
 Mnuchin and Linton recently returned from their honeymoon, though they have not revealed where they went. Linton is a Scottish actress and has raised eyebrows within the White House for accompanying Mnuchin to congressional hearings and on other trips that spouses don’t often take. 
 
 A Treasury Department spokesman said Monday’s flight was cleared by appropriate government channels, and that the Mnuchins covered the cost of Linton’s travel. The spokesman added that Linton did not receive any financial compensation for mentioning the fashion brands that she tagged in her Instagram post.
– Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin flew to Louisville, Ky., to push for changes to the tax code on Monday, and if that sounds like a potential opportunity to plug #valentinorockstudheels, well, you'd be surprised. Mnuchin's wife of two months, the Scottish actress Louise Linton, accompanied her husband on the trip, and posted a glam Instagram photo (her account is now private, but you can see a screenshot of the post here) of her deplaning from a military jet that includes a slew of tags for the luxury items she was apparently wearing. Among them: those Valentino pumps, #rolandmouret pants, #tomford sunnies, and #hermesscarf. It spurred what HuffPost is calling her "let them eat cake moment," after an Instagram user's take on the photo didn't sit well with Linton. A woman the New York Times identifies as Oregon mother-of-three Jenni Miller had this to say: "Glad we could pay for your little getaway. #deplorable." A portion of Linton's lengthy reply: "@Jennimiller29 cute!....Aw!! Did you think this was a personal trip?! Adorable! Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol. 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? 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. You’re adorably out of touch. Thanks for the passive aggressive nasty comment. Your kids look very cute. Your life looks cute." The Washington Post notes that Linton has "raised eyebrows" in the White House for tagging along with her husband in a way atypical of spouses. A Treasury Department rep says the couple paid for Linton's portion of the travel, and that Linton didn't get anything from the fashion brands she endorsed. It's not Linton's first brush with controversy, notes the Post in a second piece that resurfaces "last year's Zambia memoir debacle."