The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife Brigitte Macron have filed a defamation lawsuit against the right-wing influencer Candace Owens, after she claimed that the first lady was born a man. The legal action was filed on Wednesday in Delaware in the US, and said that Owens has been sharing 'outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions' to help grow her audience and make her money. The pair said the claims caused 'pain to us and our families'.
Owens has repeated the claims on her podcast and on social media channels. If you've got questions, we'll try our best to answer them...
What has Candace Owens said about Brigitte Macron?
The commentator has repeatedly shared claims that Ms Macron was born a man, and after saying in 2024 she would 'stake [her] entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man', released an eight-part podcast series called Becoming Brigitte, the lawsuit alleges.
The suit also alleges that the Macrons asked for retractions, but instead she 'mocked them and used them as additional fodder for her frenzied fan base'. In a statement, the couple said, 'Ms Owens' campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety.'
Where did the claim come from?
The BBC reports that the claim that Brigitte Macron was born a man has existed online in fringe circles for years, claiming she went by Jean-Michel Trogneux, which is her brother's name.
Owens spread this conspiracy to her nearly seven million followers on X.
Who is Brigitte Macron?
Brigitte Macron is a former French teacher and the first lady of France. She married Emmanuel Macron in 2007, after meeting him at a high school (Le Providence, a Catholic school in northern France) when he was a student and she was a teacher. They have a 25-year age gap.
She was a 39-year-old drama teacher at the time and he was 15. When his parents found out the following year that they had begun a relationship, they sent him away to boarding school.
'Emmanuel had to leave for Paris,' she told Paris Match. 'I told myself that he would fall in love with someone his [own] age. It didn’t happen.'
While they kept in touch over the years, Brigitte was married to someone else with whom she had three children around Macron's age.
Speaking on their age gap, she told France's RTL radio station, 'We are not a model couple. Of course we are not the ideal couple. Being a couple is complicated, it's an everyday struggle (...) When you have a big age difference, it can be even more complicated.'
The pair made headlines earlier this year when a video went viral showing Brigitte appearing to slap the president in the face. According to ABC News, Macron played down the incident, saying, 'We are bickering and joking with my wife and a video becomes a sort of geoplanetary catastrophe.'
Who is Candace Owens?
Candace Owens is a right-wing commentator known for working at Turning Point, a student conservative publication, and conservative media outlet Daily Wire before launching her own podcast in 2024.
She's been embroiled in multiple controversies including criticisms of Black Lives Matter and spreading conspiracies including that the moon landing was faked.
She is married to George Farmer, a British-American entrepreneur. His father is a House of Lords peer and former Conservative Party treasurer, Baron Michael Farmer.
Ruchira Sharma is Acting Senior Editor at Grazia, where she writes and edits features for print and digital. From online dating culture, to cryptocurrency and online conspiracy theories, she's most interested by how online life shapes society, and co-hosts the pop culture podcast Everything Is Content.