French President Emmanuel Macron and First Lady Brigitte Macron Photo: Shutterstock
In Paris on Thursday, two women were found guilty of libel for spreading a false rumor that French First Lady Brigitte Macron was born a man and is living as a transgender woman. The pair will pay €13,500 (about $15,000) in fines and damages.
The conspiracy theory claimed that Brigitte Macron was really her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, and that he had transitioned to a woman who became the wife of the French president.
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Brigitte Macron’s brother was present at the trial.
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The claim was made without proof by a self-described independent journalist and the host of a YouTube channel in a 2021 video posted to the platform. Conspiracy theorists spread the false claim across the internet and around the world.
In the U.S., MAGA provocateur Candace Owens took particular delight in the salacious rumors, twisting the facts to include accusing the French president of being gay and raped by his pre-transitioned pedophile male lover when Macron was 14 years old.
Brigitte Macron has said that she tried to ignore the outrageous rumors but when they began to affect her parents and family she made a decision to fight back. Her family is well-known for owning and operating a chain of chocolate stores in northern France.
After a long silence on the issue, President Emmanuel Macron addressed the rumors in March in a brief statement to the press outside Place Vendôme in Paris. He said the false claims had hurt him and his wife and impacted his family life.
Owens’ perpetuation of the conspiracy theory, even as its two instigators were on trial this summer, is an example of why the rumors were so hurtful for the Macrons.
“I will say this until I’m blue in the face,” Owens fulminated just last month. “Brigitte Macron is a man. He transitioned. His name used to be Jean-Michel Trogneux, and then he became Brigitte. And when Brigitte was 40 years old—and no one will counter this fact in the media. Instead, they just call it a ‘conspiracy theory’ because that’s what it’s always—just call everybody names. It’s a conspiracy theory.”
“But the reality is that, yes, Brigitte Macron statutorily raped Emmanuel Macron. So if the state actually cared about stomping out people that were aiding and abetting pedophilia, aiding and abetting crimes against minors, then you would not have Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte Macron in office. That is the reality.”
Trafficking in conspiracy theories is Owens’ bread and butter. Her latest include one claiming all world leaders are gay, and another that puts TikTok behind a plot to socially engineer men to be — you guessed it — gay.
Owens won’t have a chance to respond to the trial verdict repudiating the claims she’s made on her YouTube channel for at least a week — that’s because she’s been suspended by the platform over an interview she recently conducted with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, in which the two promoted antisemitic tropes banned under YouTube guidelines.
