Can the president and first lady of France stop Candace Owens' lies?

Los Angeles Times

2 days ago

Why is American right-wing commentator Candace Owens so obsessed with French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte?
'I am disgusted by your relationship,' Owens said in January, after the Macrons asked her to stop accusing the French first lady of being a transgender woman. 'You make me sick, Brigitte.'
Sure, in our patriarchal world, it's unusual for a wife to be 24 years older than her husband. But President Trump is also 24 years older than his wife, Melania.
So, seriously, what is the big whoop?
One answer can be found in the 219-page defamation lawsuit filed Wednesday against Owens by the Macrons in Delaware Superior Court. In exhaustive detail, the lawsuit lays out the preposterous claims made by Owens about the French first couple, subjecting them to 'a campaign of global humiliation.'
The law firm representing the Macrons, Clare Locke, is the same outfit that won a massive settlement against Fox News for defaming Dominion Voting Systems in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
As the lawsuit recounts, in March 2024, Owens was dismissed by Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire media operation after making a series of antisemitic comments, including repeating the 'blood libel' that Jews drink the blood of Christian babies.
In June 2024, she launched her newly independent YouTube channel and, according to the Macron lawsuit, was hungry for attention and 'searching for a salacious conspiracy theory to increase viewership.'
At one point on X, she described her wackadoodle claims about the Macrons as the 'biggest scandal that has ever happened in politics in human history.'
Oh, I dunno. As far as political scandals go, I think real ones like Watergate, Iran-Contra and the Jan. 6 insurrection were a teensy bit more impactful than a fantasy about a first lady's sex change.
So how, exactly, did Owens land on a conspiracy theory focused on the French president and first lady?
According to the Macron lawsuit, in September 2019, Owens became involved in French far-right politics after she was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Convention de la Droite (Convention of the Right) in Paris.
Her 15-minute speech was the usual Stephen Miller-esque litany of complaints familiar to Christian nationalists: immigrants, political correctness, secularism and, of course, the 'fake news media' are ruining America.
She made spectacularly asinine assertions about police killings of unarmed Black men, claiming that in 2016, 'only' 16 unarmed Black men were slain by police and that Black men had a higher chance of being struck by lightning than killed by cops.
She also endeared herself to her audience when she accused Macron of being a weak leader and, horrors, a 'globalist.'
In any case, it seems that accusing high-profile women of being a transgender has become fashionable on the transphobic far right.
As you may recall, some of this country's most heinous conspiracy theorists have leveled the same bizarre charge against Michelle Obama, whose husband, the Hawaii-born former President Obama, was repeatedly accused by Trump of not being born in the U.S. These outlandish accusations spring from the impulse to inflict as much political damage as possible.
In early 2025, Owens launched an eight-part series on her YouTube channel called 'Becoming Brigitte.' In it, she claimed the French president is gay. That his relationship with Brigitte is incestuous. That they engage in pedophilia and worship a satanic idol called Baphomet.
She has cited a 2021 Daily Mail story as her source, when in fact that piece was a complete debunking of the very conspiracy theories she was promoting.
The Daily Mail traced the origin of the conspiracy theory to a piece published two months earlier in a French far-right newsletter, Faits et Documents (Facts and Documents). The allegations, according to the Daily Mail, were an attempt to damage the 2022 reelection prospects of Macron, who faced two right-wing opponents. Fait et Documents claimed no childhood photographs of Brigitte Macron could be found. But, as the Daily Mail — and the Macron lawsuit — note, there is a newspaper announcement of her 1953 birth, photos of her taking communion at 7, and photos of her first wedding.
How likely are the French first couple to prevail in a defamation lawsuit?
The standard of proof in American courts, especially for people as famous as they are, is very, very high. The Macrons will have to prove that Owens acted with 'actual malice,' that she knew what she was saying is false and said it anyway, or that she acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true or not.
The Macrons, according to their lawsuit, sent her three separate retraction demands, explicitly stating that her claims were false, and included evidence such as birth records, marriage records and photographs. They have asked for a jury trial and unspecified damages.
Owens has remained defiant, claiming to her nearly 4.5 million YouTube subscribers that the Macrons are trying to silence her, and that their lawsuit is proof that her allegations are correct. 'I am fully prepared to take on this battle,' Owens said. 'On behalf of the entire world, I will see you in court.'
Personally, I think she should be nervous.
Robert Barnes, the right-wing attorney who defended the loony conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, agrees.
'Owens told some of the dumbest, obvious lies one can tell,' Barnes wrote Thursday on X. 'She has 0% chance of winning in court.'
I can hardly wait.
Bluesky: @rabcarianThreads: @rabcarian