Relations between France and America is likely to be about to get even frostier. Proper-wing US commentators have reignited an absurd hearsay about Brigitte Macron, spouse of French president Emmanuel Macron: particularly, that she was truly born male and has been hiding her transgender standing from the world.
Probably the most distinguished proponents of this outlandish conspiracy concept are two Trump-supporting, conservative voices: Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, who supercharged the gossip after claiming it was true in a video posted on YouTube final week.
For her half, rising social media star Owens first latched onto the scurrilous hearsay a 12 months in the past, posting a video to her YouTube channel pithily titled “Is France’s first girl a person?” Selling it on X (previously Twitter), Owens wrote: “Cease every thing and watch this! Not a joke or an exaggeration to say that barring political assassinations, that is probably the most important scandal that has ever occurred in politics in human historical past.”
Since then, the story has turn out to be a preferred matter within the corners of the web frequented by followers of Donald Trump’s Maga motion.
In her March 2024 video (since deleted), Owens referred to the probably authentic supply of the salacious story: a 2021 article in Proper-wing French journal Faits et Paperwork, which made the jaw-dropping declare that Brigitte, 71, and her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux have been truly the identical particular person. The story posited that Jean-Michel doesn’t truly exist: Brigitte herself was born Jean-Michel, then transitioned from male to feminine on the age of 30.
Brigitte Macron along with her husband in 2017. The couple have fought again in opposition to claims she was born male – YOAN VALAT/EPA
“I might stake my complete skilled popularity on the truth that Brigitte Macron is in truth a person,” introduced Owens in a follow-up publish on X. “Any journalist or publication that’s
attempting to dismiss this plausibility is instantly identifiable as institution.” She added: “The implications listed below are terrifying.”
The video, in Owens’s phrases, “blew up”, which maybe explains why this turned her pet matter. She has since handled her 4.07 million YouTube subscribers to quite a few posts concerning the French first girl, together with a multi-part video sequence known as Changing into Brigitte.
Owens is undeterred by criticism of her marketing campaign, together with from Piers Morgan. On his present in June 2024, the broadcaster – who known as her claims “very offensive, very flawed” – guess Owens $100,000 (to be donated to charity) that Mrs Macron is in truth a lady. Then in a January 2025 video titled “I Received A Authorized Risk From A Sitting President…”, Owens reveals that she was contacted by a regulation agency representing the Macrons themselves. She shares a piece of that letter which reads: “This disinformation marketing campaign is sort of completely primarily based on a unfavourable – Mrs Macron has not offered definitive proof that she is a lady; subsequently, she have to be a person.” The letter argues that Mrs Macron doesn’t owe Owens proof – “frankly, it’s none of what you are promoting” – and claims that Owens is being “defamatory”.
However getting the eye of France’s first household has solely fuelled Owens’s marketing campaign. In February, she posted a video interview with French journalist Xavier Poussard, editor of Faits et Paperwork and creator of the e book Devenir Brigitte, or Changing into Brigitte (which subsequently shot to the highest of the Amazon charts). That video has clocked up 1.7 million views.
It’s precisely the end result Poussard hoped for, in accordance with Emmanuelle Anizon, a journalist at French weekly Le Nouvel Obs and the creator of a e book concerning the conspiracy, known as L’affaire Madame – Anatomie d’une faux news, or The Madame Affair – Anatomy of Faux Information. She advised Agence France-Presse final 12 months that Poussard began translating his Macron articles into English in 2023 and despatched them to associates of Trump. It was his dream, Anizon added, “to export this hearsay throughout the Atlantic”.
The speculation had initially simply been a home-grown obsession. Self-described journalist Natacha Rey amplified the Faits et Paperwork story by way of a four-hour YouTube video in December 2021 during which she was interviewed by religious medium Amandine Roy, and known as Mrs Macron’s identification a “state lie”. She claimed that Mrs Macron’s first husband, André-Louis Auzière, by no means truly existed, and that Auzière’s uncle had solid paperwork to cover the truth that his personal spouse had given beginning to Macron’s three youngsters.
The video went viral within the build-up to France’s 2022 presidential election, garnering half 1,000,000 views earlier than YouTube eliminated it for violating its pointers round “faux information”. However the genie was out of the bottle. The hashtag #JeanMichelTrogneux, which referred to Macron’s alleged actual male title, was trending on X, then Twitter, in France within the days after the video was posted. In whole, it was used on the platform greater than 66,000 instances whereas being unfold by accounts together with these administered by anti-vaccine teams and followers of the QAnon conspiracy motion – which states the world is run by a cabal of cannibalistic paedophiles.
The Macrons fought again. Talking at an occasion in Paris in March 2024, the French president mentioned of the hearsay: “The worst factor is the false data and fabricated situations. Individuals ultimately imagine them and disturb you, even in your intimacy.” Additionally in March, Mrs Macron’s daughter, Tiphaine Auzière, advised broadcaster BFMTV that the rumours have been “grotesque”, and “a type of harassment”.
Macron’s daughter, Tiphaine Auzière (pictured right here along with her husband Antoine Choteau and their youngsters) mentioned the rumours about her mom have been ‘grotesque’ – Chesnot
The primary girl filed a profitable libel grievance in opposition to Roy and Rey, and in September 2024 the defendants have been ordered to pay her the equal of £6,750 in damages, in addition to £4,205 to her brother Jean-Michel. Macron’s lawyer Jean Ennochi commented: “The bias is huge, it exploded in all places.”
Nevertheless, that spirited public defence has, satirically, saved the story alive. Owens first heard of it because of an article about Macron’s livid response. Now the highly effective American commentator Tucker Carlson has picked up the baton. In a YouTube video posted final week, Carlson backed up the declare made by “my pal Candace Owens”. He says he had initially dismissed the hearsay as a “flat Earth” conspiracy. “Then it seems she’s proper – my thoughts is blown!” declares Carlson, providing no justification for this assertion.
Russian state media can be selecting up Owens’s protection – to her evident satisfaction, as demonstrated in a video during which she watches herself in a Russian TV report. “I didn’t realise how superb my title sounds in a Russian accent,” she remarks.
For others, in the meantime, the “reality” is even stranger nonetheless. Owens fan Gabby Garcia took to TikTok final month with a weird Oedipal plot twist. She claimed that the president isn’t simply married to a trans lady – Mrs Macron is definitely his personal father. “I do know that it sounds insane,” says Garcia, in arguably the understatement of the 12 months. “My mind is melting.”
She’s not alone. However how on earth did this absurd accusation acquire world traction? Sander van der Linden, professor of social psychology in society on the College of Cambridge, factors out that we reside in an more and more fragmented media setting. “We don’t have central dissemination of stories. As a substitute persons are in tiny echo chambers, slavishly trusting their chosen sources of knowledge. It’s laborious for us to share the identical actuality. These are ultimate situations for conspiracy theories to thrive. Even when folks don’t absolutely imagine in a hearsay, they may share it as a logo of their beliefs or the political group they help.”
Joseph Uscinski, professor of political science on the College of Miami, observes that the likes of Owens and Tucker have “a built-in, conspiracy-minded viewers. These viewers didn’t slip on a banana peel and find yourself right here: they particularly selected a channel exterior of the mainstream media. The broadcasters then have to supply the content material they want. The Macron story is right fodder. It feeds into their current biases, plus it’s outrageous and enjoyable.”
Such audiences may not even know who Brigitte Macron is, however this conspiracy pertains to a bigger narrative, explains van der Linden. “It’s a mix of evil elites hiding stuff from us and never being who they are saying they’re, and suspicion of trans folks and gender ideology. It’s a extra palatable model of the conspiracy that highly effective leaders are literally lizards – that’s a bridge too far for most individuals.” Certainly, Owens usually ticks off different tradition battle matters in her Macron movies, corresponding to anti-vax sentiments.
The Macron transgender accusation is clearly recycled, says van der Linden. “The very same story was peddled about Michelle Obama and Jacinda Ardern.” However even when it’s patently nonsense, the truth that many present world leaders, “particularly Trump and his allies”, are participating in conspiracy concept rhetoric signifies that it’s more durable to outright dismiss it, says Uscinski. “Tucker and Candace are piggybacking on Trump.”
That factors to the lethal critical a part of this in any other case ludicrous saga. Relations between France and America are already a lot troubled, with one French politician, Raphaël Glucksmann, even claiming this week that the nation ought to take again the Statue of Liberty after what he characterised as President Trump deciding to “facet with the tyrants” within the battle on Ukraine. White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt fired again, saying that if it weren’t for her nation the French can be “talking German proper now”.
It’s not inconceivable that if the hearsay turns into related to supporters of Trump, the difficulty may add additional pressure to an already tough relationship between the US president and his French counterpart. Such an final result would definitely be welcome in Moscow, says van der Linden. “Russia’s purpose is to stoke division and chaos,” he warns. Unsubstantiated rumours, in spite of everything, can usually have very actual penalties.
Source link