The absurd Brigitte Macron conspiracy theory sweeping America

Telegraph

19-03-2025

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'.
But getting the attention of France's first family has only fuelled Owens's campaign. In February, she posted a video interview with French journalist Xavier Poussard, editor of Faits et Documents and author of the book Devenir Brigitte, or Becoming Brigitte (which subsequently shot to the top of the Amazon charts). That video has clocked up 1.7 million views.
It's exactly the outcome Poussard was hoping for, according to Emmanuelle Anizon, a journalist at French weekly Le Nouvel Obs and the author of a book about the conspiracy, called L'affaire Madame – Anatomie d'une fake new s, or The Madame Affair – Anatomy of Fake News. She told Agence France-Presse last year that Poussard started translating his Macron articles into English in 2023 and sent them to associates of Trump. It was his dream, Anizon added, 'to export this rumour across the Atlantic'.
The theory had initially just been a home-grown obsession. Self-described journalist Natacha Rey amplified the Faits et Documents story via a four-hour YouTube video in December 2021 in which she was interviewed by spiritual medium Amandine Roy, and called Mrs Macron's identity a 'state lie'. She claimed that Mrs Macron's first husband, André-Louis Auzière, never actually existed, and that Auzière's uncle had forged documents to hide the fact that his own wife had given birth to Macron's three children.
The video went viral in the build-up to France's 2022 presidential election, garnering half a million views before YouTube removed it for violating its guidelines around 'fake news'. But the genie was out of the bottle. The hashtag #JeanMichelTrogneux, which referred to Macron's alleged real male name, was trending on X, then Twitter, in France in the days after the video was posted. In total, it was used on the platform more than 66,000 times while being spread by accounts including those administered by anti-vaccine groups and followers of the QAnon conspiracy movement – which states the world is run by a cabal of cannibalistic paedophiles.
The Macrons fought back. Speaking at an event in Paris in March 2024, the French president said of the rumour: 'The worst thing is the false information and fabricated scenarios. People eventually believe them and disturb you, even in your intimacy.' Also in March, Mrs Macron's daughter, Tiphaine Auzière, told broadcaster BFMTV that the rumours were 'grotesque', and 'a form of harassment'.
The first lady filed a successful libel complaint against Roy and Rey, and in September 2024 the defendants were ordered to pay her the equivalent of £6,750 in damages, as well as £4,205 to her brother Jean-Michel. Macron's lawyer Jean Ennochi commented: 'The prejudice is massive, it exploded everywhere.'
However, that spirited public defence has, ironically, kept the story alive. Owens first heard of it thanks to an article about Macron's furious response. Now the powerful American commentator Tucker Carlson has picked up the baton. In a YouTube video posted last week, Carlson backed up the claim made by 'my friend Candace Owens'. He says he had initially dismissed the rumour as a 'flat Earth' conspiracy. 'Then it turns out she's right – my mind is blown!' declares Carlson, offering no justification for this assertion.
Russian state media is also picking up Owens's coverage – to her evident pride, as demonstrated in a video in which she watches herself in a Russian TV report. 'I didn't realise how amazing my name sounds in a Russian accent,' she remarks.
For others, meanwhile, the 'truth' is even stranger still. Owens fan Gabby Garcia took to TikTok last month with a bizarre Oedipal plot twist. She claimed that the president isn't just married to a trans woman – Mrs Macron is actually his own father. 'I know that it sounds insane,' says Garcia, in arguably the understatement of the year. 'My brain is melting.'
She's not alone. But how on earth did this absurd accusation gain global traction? Sander van der Linden, professor of social psychology in society at the University of Cambridge, points out that we live in an increasingly fragmented media environment. 'We don't have central dissemination of news. Instead people are in tiny echo chambers, slavishly trusting their chosen sources of information. It's hard for us to share the same reality. Those are ideal conditions for conspiracy theories to thrive. Even if people don't fully believe in a rumour, they might share it as a symbol of their beliefs or the political group they support.'
Joseph Uscinski, professor of political science at the University of Miami, observes that the likes of Owens and Tucker have 'a built-in, conspiracy-minded audience. Those viewers didn't slip on a banana peel and end up here: they specifically chose a channel outside of the mainstream media. The broadcasters then have to provide the content they desire. The Macron story is ideal fodder. It feeds into their existing biases, plus it's outrageous and fun.'
Such audiences might not even know who Brigitte Macron is, but this conspiracy relates to a larger narrative, explains van der Linden. 'It's a combination of evil elites hiding stuff from us and not being who they say they are, and suspicion of trans people and gender ideology. It's a more palatable version of the conspiracy that powerful leaders are actually lizards – that's a bridge too far for most people.' Indeed, Owens often ticks off other culture war topics in her Macron videos, such as anti-vax sentiments.
The Macron transgender accusation is clearly recycled, says van der Linden. 'The exact same story was peddled about Michelle Obama and Jacinda Ardern.' But even if it's patently nonsense, the fact that many current world leaders, 'especially Trump and his allies', are engaging in conspiracy theory rhetoric means that it's harder to outright dismiss it, says Uscinski. 'Tucker and Candace are piggybacking on Trump.'
That points to the deadly serious part of this otherwise ludicrous saga. Relations between France and America are already much troubled, with one French politician, Raphaël Glucksmann, even claiming this week that the country should take back the Statue of Liberty after what he characterised as President Trump deciding to 'side with the tyrants' in the war on Ukraine. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt fired back, saying that if it weren't for her country the French would be 'speaking German right now'.
It's not inconceivable that if the rumour becomes associated with supporters of Trump, the issue could add further strain to an already tricky relationship between the US president and his French counterpart. Such an outcome would certainly be welcome in Moscow, says van der Linden. 'Russia's goal is to stoke division and chaos,' he warns. Unsubstantiated rumours, after all, can often have very real consequences.