Donald Trump Jr., the son of the US president, just could not stay away from the controversy surrounding the wife of Alec Baldwin, the actor who frequently takes aim at his family and father in particular during Saturday Night Live appearances.
Hilaria Baldwin, born Hillary Hayward-Thomas, is having a difficult time on social media after it was revealed on Twitter that the socialite, who repeatedly spoke with a heavy Spanish accent during her TV appearances and even once had difficulty remembering the English word for “cucumber” during the Today Show, had no solid links to Spain whatsoever – apart from the fact that her parents moved there in 2011 and she had travelled a lot to the country as a child. Her husband, however, claimed at some point that his wife was from Spain, and her bio at CAA and IMDb pages had previously stated Mallorca, Spain as her place of birth.
“Alec Baldwin should play Alec Baldwin when SNL parodies his wife pretending she's Spanish for the last few decades as opposed to the basic white girl from Mass that she actually is. It would be the first funny thing Saturday Night Live has produced in years,” Don Jr. wrote on Twitter.
Shortly before the tweet, he shared an article about Alec Baldwin’s wife titled “Hilaria Baldwin Says People Are Just ‘Confused’ About Her Fake Accent, Spanish Heritage.”
“They’re confused as to why anyone would spend decades lying about your place of birth and fake an accent...”, the president’s son commented.
Don Jr.’s words have found some response among Twitter crowd who have been following news surrounding the “fake Spanish heritage” scandal for days. But many just could not ignore the fact that a lot of Baldwin’s impersonations are actually too funny to miss.
Hilaria, who earlier confirmed on Instagram that she was indeed born in Boston and that neither of her parents are actually Spanish, gave a lengthy interview to the New York Times on Wednesday, saying that people have been “confused” about her identity as others have been “misrepresenting” her.
“It is not that I am doing something wrong, and I think there is a difference between hiding and creating a boundary,” the famed yoga instructor said, clarifying that she was indeed born in Boston and moved to New York at the age of 19.
Many have previously assumed that the woman had made her way to the United States at that point, as she'd claimed during an April podcast. Hilaria never seemed to deny the impression back then.
“For me, I feel like I have spent 10 years sharing that story over and over again. And now it seems like it’s not enough,” the woman argued, refusing to admit that she had been lying about her origins.
According to Alec Baldwin’s wife, she was pretty clear about her roots and Boston upbringing, something she said her husband was aware of.
The actor himself said on social media that his wife had “reinvented herself as a Spanish woman”.
Hilaria’s “decade long grift” came into the spotlight following a now-deleted Twitter thread from the @lenibriscoe account, who later told the Daily Mail that it was “offensive and wrong” for the influencer to pretend to be an immigrant and give the impression of speaking English as a second language as it tends to appropriate “the actual experience that actual immigrant women have”.
The anonymous person behind the account, also white, said that she had posted the tweet that has created such a clamour only because she was bored.