False rumours that Brigitte Macron is transgender have been spreading for years. Now Candace Owens, an American far right commentator, has published a video repeating them and gaining millions of views.
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00:00Why are the false rumours that Brigitte Macron is transgender circulating again?
00:06The debunked conspiracy theory that the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron was born a biological man
00:12and transitioned to become a woman has been pushed many times in recent years.
00:16On Friday, far-right American commentator Candace Owens released a video titled
00:20Becoming Brigitte? An Introduction.
00:22In it, she rehashes the claim that Brigitte Macron was born a man and went by the name Jean-Michel Trouillot.
00:29She also claims to be the target of a legal threat from the French President.
00:46Owens offers no evidence to back this up and says this will be the first in a series investigating Brigitte Macron.
00:52The video has more than 2.5 million views on YouTube and has also been released on other platforms
00:57including Spotify. A slew of viral posts on X have since popped up repeating the claim.
01:02But it is not true.
01:04The conspiracy theory has been floating around since Emmanuel Macron was first elected in 2017.
01:09It was then pushed by self-described journalist Natasha Rae.
01:12She claimed that Brigitte never existed and that her brother Jean-Michel had changed gender and started using that name.
01:19Rae was interviewed by Amandine Roy, a self-proclaimed spiritual medium, for a YouTube video in 2021
01:25and the false theory went viral before the 2022 presidential election.
01:29This led Brigitte Macron to file a libel complaint and in September the pair were ordered by a French court
01:34to pay €8,000 in damages to her and €5,000 to her brother.
01:39Emmanuel Macron also commented on the claims for the first time last year, saying there are still some crazies out there.