The war among the Right is raging in the United States, combining ideological, class, and generational conflict. The implications of this debate, which is stirring up political parties, the media, and social media, are endless and are not limited to American politics. Europe is also affected by contagion.
In France, the controversy has taken on a particular twist, as one of the main protagonists, influencer Candace Owens, is engaged in an open war with French President Emmanuel Macron.
The American presenter has become the mouthpiece for a rumour that has been circulating in France for several years: that the president’s wife, Brigitte Macron, is actually a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux. The affair is being passionately discussed on French social media. The hashtag launched on X around the affair, #JeanMichelTrogneux, topped Twitter trends for a while before mysteriously being relegated to the social network’s oblivion. Investigations and counter-investigations have followed one another in an attempt to trace the career of the enigmatic wife of the head of state and her curious relationship with a man 25 years her junior.
There is no need to get lost in the twists and turns of the investigation carried out by two French influencers, Natacha Rey and Amandine Roy, and by Xavier Poussard and Emmanuel Rattier’s investigative newspaper Faits et Documents—whose conclusions Owens merely repeats without adding anything new—nor to insist that Jean-Michel is hiding behind Brigitte’s guise, to conclude that there is something deeply unhealthy about the relationship between these two figures who now occupy the highest office in the land.
Regardless of Brigitte Macron’s sexual identity, the facts known to the public and proven in the official press are already enough to make your hair stand on end: here is a forty-year-old woman, a theatre teacher in a Catholic high school, who began a ‘romantic’ relationship with one of her students when he was not yet sixteen. The tabloid press may well gloss over the romance with flattering terms such as “unusual path” and “unique duo challenging conventions,” but the facts are cruel: this is a case of statutory rape, and the affair was punishable by law. At the time, Amiens high society was rocked by the scandal. The young boy left for Paris, and the teacher was transferred to a prestigious Catholic high school in Paris, which apparently did not take issue with this morally questionable relationship. A few years earlier, a similar story had unfolded in Marseille, ending up in court. The teacher, Gabrielle Russier, was convicted and sent to prison, where she committed suicide for having had a relationship with one of her 16-year-old students. Brigitte and Emmanuel were luckier—or benefited from the laxity of a society in an advanced state of moral decay.
Candace Owens took up the cause with her characteristic excessiveness—so much so that she ended up being sued by Emmanuel Macron.
Owens then reignited the controversy by claiming that Macron had ordered her assassination. She sees France’s hand in everything, going so far as to link the French Foreign Legion to the death of Charlie Kirk, claiming on X that the 13th Brigade of the Foreign Legion had personally trained Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk’s killer.
The rumour about Brigitte Macron persists and, despite legal action, has not yet been officially condemned by the courts, as conservative philosopher and political scientist Guillaume Bernard points out. Curiously, the lawsuits that have touched on the case have all dealt with related issues (cyberbullying, document falsification), but never directly with the main issue at stake: namely, is it right or wrong to say that Brigitte Macron was born a man?
The discredit surrounding Owens and her methods should not distract from the real and substantial problem posed by the president’s relationship with his wife.
In France, on the Right, as well as on the Left and in the centre, it is fashionable to dismiss the Jean-Michel controversy with a mocking tone and to label anyone who pays too much attention to it a conspiracy theorist. Those who, on X, criticise Xavier Poussard’s readers or Natacha Rey’s listeners do not mince words when it comes to showering them with a whole host of unflattering epithets. In a nutshell, they are all idiots, conspiracy theorists, flat-earthers, and who knows what else. There is obvious class contempt in these unnuanced judgements. Some may think Natacha Rey and Amandine Roy are hardly enviable, with their plumpness of lonely old women, their garish clothes, their dyed hair, and their spelling mistakes. So what? The energy expended by some in these condemnations is all the more surprising given that it comes from people who, not so long ago, also had to suffer personally from this type of accusation. It is all the more unpleasant for us to write this because some of them are people we respect for their writing or their positions. Tired of being the scapegoats of the system, do they hope, for a moment, to redeem their conscience and curry favour with the exclusive holders of politically correct morality?
Unfortunately, this strategy will not work. They will not appear any more respectable in the eyes of those who already hate them, and they will cut themselves off from those they criticise and despise for their supposed conspiracy theories.
We may never know what lies beneath Brigitte Macron’s skirts. Nevertheless, today, one must acknowledge the controversy, the many grey areas surrounding Brigitte Macron’s character, and the manifestly unhealthy nature of Emmanuel Macron’s marriage, whose emotional imbalance is not without serious consequences for the country and constantly surfaces in the way he handles the crises facing the country he now leads. We must learn to use what is good in this controversy and understand what it reveals about those who believe in it to the end. They have understood that their misfortunes and the collapse of the country they cherish are the result of choices made by deeply morally corrupt elites, with the complicity of media outlets that prefer to twist the facts (“a unique duo,” “an unusual path”) rather than face the relentless reality: an unbalanced couple is running the country.
In an op-ed published in August 2025 for Valeurs Actuelles, Bernard provided a lucid summary of the Trogneux affair. Recalling that, to date, the legal strategy of those opposed to the rumour has never addressed the root of the problem, he called on the presidential couple to take strong action to finally put an end to the controversy with the authority that is theirs, using very simple evidence—a DNA test of Brigitte Macron, a photo of her pregnant. Their stubborn attitude in this affair is doing a lot of harm to the country, when a little detachment and magnanimity would allow them to rise above this cesspool. Didn’t the queens of yesteryear give birth in public? While the practice shocks us today, it made some sense. Today, Bernard reminds us, we no longer give birth in public, but we play on romance to move the common people’s hearts to the loves of the “unique duo.” It is this whole unhealthy system that must be denounced, with an energy that no one seems ready to muster. It is more comfortable to spew vitriol at Owens’ excesses—but that leads nowhere politically.
As we have attempted to demonstrate in our previous reflections on the war of the Right, the scandal created by influencers must be assessed at its true value and must not distract us from the real political target.
The difference from the United States is that the mass of people following the Trogneux affair do not represent an electoral bloc capable of achieving a victory like that of Trump at the head of the MAGA movement in 2016 and then in 2024.
But France works differently. It is the country of the mazarinades, those seemingly crude and burlesque pamphlets distributed in the streets, which did more harm to the minister of the young Louis XIV than any polite argument. In 1847, it was a multitude of seemingly minor scandals that paved the way for the outbreak of revolution the following year. What brought down King Louis-Philippe, it is often said, was a caricature of him in the shape of a pear. The drawing began to circulate in 1831. Seemingly grotesque? No more grotesque than the idea that Brigitte Macron is a man. By 1848, the famous drawing had become the emblem of the despised monarch who had to be overthrown at all costs. Macron would do well to remember this.
Owens vs. Macron: The French Side of an American War
Roman Mosaic with the masks of tragedy and comedy, 2nd century A.D.
Capitoline Museums, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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The war among the Right is raging in the United States, combining ideological, class, and generational conflict. The implications of this debate, which is stirring up political parties, the media, and social media, are endless and are not limited to American politics. Europe is also affected by contagion.
In France, the controversy has taken on a particular twist, as one of the main protagonists, influencer Candace Owens, is engaged in an open war with French President Emmanuel Macron.
The American presenter has become the mouthpiece for a rumour that has been circulating in France for several years: that the president’s wife, Brigitte Macron, is actually a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux. The affair is being passionately discussed on French social media. The hashtag launched on X around the affair, #JeanMichelTrogneux, topped Twitter trends for a while before mysteriously being relegated to the social network’s oblivion. Investigations and counter-investigations have followed one another in an attempt to trace the career of the enigmatic wife of the head of state and her curious relationship with a man 25 years her junior.
There is no need to get lost in the twists and turns of the investigation carried out by two French influencers, Natacha Rey and Amandine Roy, and by Xavier Poussard and Emmanuel Rattier’s investigative newspaper Faits et Documents—whose conclusions Owens merely repeats without adding anything new—nor to insist that Jean-Michel is hiding behind Brigitte’s guise, to conclude that there is something deeply unhealthy about the relationship between these two figures who now occupy the highest office in the land.
Regardless of Brigitte Macron’s sexual identity, the facts known to the public and proven in the official press are already enough to make your hair stand on end: here is a forty-year-old woman, a theatre teacher in a Catholic high school, who began a ‘romantic’ relationship with one of her students when he was not yet sixteen. The tabloid press may well gloss over the romance with flattering terms such as “unusual path” and “unique duo challenging conventions,” but the facts are cruel: this is a case of statutory rape, and the affair was punishable by law. At the time, Amiens high society was rocked by the scandal. The young boy left for Paris, and the teacher was transferred to a prestigious Catholic high school in Paris, which apparently did not take issue with this morally questionable relationship. A few years earlier, a similar story had unfolded in Marseille, ending up in court. The teacher, Gabrielle Russier, was convicted and sent to prison, where she committed suicide for having had a relationship with one of her 16-year-old students. Brigitte and Emmanuel were luckier—or benefited from the laxity of a society in an advanced state of moral decay.
Candace Owens took up the cause with her characteristic excessiveness—so much so that she ended up being sued by Emmanuel Macron.
Owens then reignited the controversy by claiming that Macron had ordered her assassination. She sees France’s hand in everything, going so far as to link the French Foreign Legion to the death of Charlie Kirk, claiming on X that the 13th Brigade of the Foreign Legion had personally trained Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk’s killer.
The rumour about Brigitte Macron persists and, despite legal action, has not yet been officially condemned by the courts, as conservative philosopher and political scientist Guillaume Bernard points out. Curiously, the lawsuits that have touched on the case have all dealt with related issues (cyberbullying, document falsification), but never directly with the main issue at stake: namely, is it right or wrong to say that Brigitte Macron was born a man?
The discredit surrounding Owens and her methods should not distract from the real and substantial problem posed by the president’s relationship with his wife.
In France, on the Right, as well as on the Left and in the centre, it is fashionable to dismiss the Jean-Michel controversy with a mocking tone and to label anyone who pays too much attention to it a conspiracy theorist. Those who, on X, criticise Xavier Poussard’s readers or Natacha Rey’s listeners do not mince words when it comes to showering them with a whole host of unflattering epithets. In a nutshell, they are all idiots, conspiracy theorists, flat-earthers, and who knows what else. There is obvious class contempt in these unnuanced judgements. Some may think Natacha Rey and Amandine Roy are hardly enviable, with their plumpness of lonely old women, their garish clothes, their dyed hair, and their spelling mistakes. So what? The energy expended by some in these condemnations is all the more surprising given that it comes from people who, not so long ago, also had to suffer personally from this type of accusation. It is all the more unpleasant for us to write this because some of them are people we respect for their writing or their positions. Tired of being the scapegoats of the system, do they hope, for a moment, to redeem their conscience and curry favour with the exclusive holders of politically correct morality?
Unfortunately, this strategy will not work. They will not appear any more respectable in the eyes of those who already hate them, and they will cut themselves off from those they criticise and despise for their supposed conspiracy theories.
We may never know what lies beneath Brigitte Macron’s skirts. Nevertheless, today, one must acknowledge the controversy, the many grey areas surrounding Brigitte Macron’s character, and the manifestly unhealthy nature of Emmanuel Macron’s marriage, whose emotional imbalance is not without serious consequences for the country and constantly surfaces in the way he handles the crises facing the country he now leads. We must learn to use what is good in this controversy and understand what it reveals about those who believe in it to the end. They have understood that their misfortunes and the collapse of the country they cherish are the result of choices made by deeply morally corrupt elites, with the complicity of media outlets that prefer to twist the facts (“a unique duo,” “an unusual path”) rather than face the relentless reality: an unbalanced couple is running the country.
In an op-ed published in August 2025 for Valeurs Actuelles, Bernard provided a lucid summary of the Trogneux affair. Recalling that, to date, the legal strategy of those opposed to the rumour has never addressed the root of the problem, he called on the presidential couple to take strong action to finally put an end to the controversy with the authority that is theirs, using very simple evidence—a DNA test of Brigitte Macron, a photo of her pregnant. Their stubborn attitude in this affair is doing a lot of harm to the country, when a little detachment and magnanimity would allow them to rise above this cesspool. Didn’t the queens of yesteryear give birth in public? While the practice shocks us today, it made some sense. Today, Bernard reminds us, we no longer give birth in public, but we play on romance to move the common people’s hearts to the loves of the “unique duo.” It is this whole unhealthy system that must be denounced, with an energy that no one seems ready to muster. It is more comfortable to spew vitriol at Owens’ excesses—but that leads nowhere politically.
As we have attempted to demonstrate in our previous reflections on the war of the Right, the scandal created by influencers must be assessed at its true value and must not distract us from the real political target.
The difference from the United States is that the mass of people following the Trogneux affair do not represent an electoral bloc capable of achieving a victory like that of Trump at the head of the MAGA movement in 2016 and then in 2024.
But France works differently. It is the country of the mazarinades, those seemingly crude and burlesque pamphlets distributed in the streets, which did more harm to the minister of the young Louis XIV than any polite argument. In 1847, it was a multitude of seemingly minor scandals that paved the way for the outbreak of revolution the following year. What brought down King Louis-Philippe, it is often said, was a caricature of him in the shape of a pear. The drawing began to circulate in 1831. Seemingly grotesque? No more grotesque than the idea that Brigitte Macron is a man. By 1848, the famous drawing had become the emblem of the despised monarch who had to be overthrown at all costs. Macron would do well to remember this.
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