THE TELEGRAPH
Relations between France and America might be about to get even frostier. Right-wing US commentators have reignited an absurd rumour about Brigitte Macron, wife of French president Emmanuel Macron: namely, that she was actually born male and has been hiding her transgender status from the world.
The most prominent proponents of this outlandish conspiracy theory 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 last week.
For her part, rising social media star Owens first latched onto the scurrilous rumour a year ago, posting a video to her YouTube channel pithily titled “Is France’s first lady a man?” Promoting it on X (formerly Twitter), Owens wrote: “Stop everything and watch this! Not a joke or an exaggeration to say that barring political assassinations, this is likely the biggest scandal that has ever happened in politics in human history.”
Since then, the story has become a popular topic in the corners of the internet frequented by followers of Donald Trump’s Maga movement.
In her March 2024 video (since deleted), Owens referred to the likely original source of the salacious story: a 2021 article in Right-wing French journal Faits et Documents, which made the jaw-dropping claim that Brigitte, 71, and her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux were actually the same person. The story posited that Jean-Michel doesn’t actually exist: Brigitte herself was born Jean-Michel, then transitioned from male to female at the age of 30.
“I would stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man,” announced Owens in a follow-up post on X. “Any journalist or publication that is trying to dismiss this plausibility is immediately identifiable as establishment.” She added: “The implications here are terrifying.”
The video, in Owens’s words, “blew up”, which perhaps explains why this became her pet topic. She has since treated her 4.07 million YouTube subscribers to numerous posts about the French first lady, including a multi-part video series called Becoming Brigitte.
Owens is undeterred by criticism of her campaign, including from Piers Morgan. On his show in June 2024, the broadcaster – who called her claims “very offensive, very wrong” – bet Owens $100,000 (to be donated to charity) that Mrs Macron is in fact a woman. Then in a January 2025 video titled “I Got A Legal Threat From A Sitting President…”, Owens reveals that she was contacted by a law firm representing the Macrons themselves. She shares a section of that letter which reads: “This disinformation campaign is almost entirely based on a negative – Mrs Macron has not provided definitive proof that she is a woman; therefore, she must be a man.” The letter argues that Mrs Macron does not owe Owens proof – “frankly, it is none of your business” – and claims that Owens is being “defamatory”.
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