TWIBS: Candace Owens Sued by Macrons
French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife Brigitte has filed suit against conservative internet yammerer Candace Owens as a result of Owens’ year-long harassment campaign.
by Alyssa Steinsiek
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Let’s round out the week with some delicious schadenfreude: Candace Owens is being sued by Brigitte Macron for defamation.
Have you heard of Candace Owens? She’s a far-right political provocateur who came to prominence by loudly antagonizing Black Lives Matters activists and protests in the late 2010s, earning her the adoration of then-president (and now-president, too) Donald Trump and hip-hop superstar and weird Nazi guy Kanye West. A Black woman espousing anti-Black political ideology was a huge get for the right-wing culture war, and Owens was soon brought on as Communications Director for white supremacist think tank Turning Point USA… then, roughly one year later, was kicked to the curb by TPUSA for saying the quiet part out loud. Next, Owens moved on to Ben Shapiro’s conservative media outlet The Daily Wire, where she hosted a political talk show… until she was fired for, bizarrely, accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide against Palestinians.
Chalk it up to Broken Clock Syndrome.
Candace Owens is a conspiracy theorist who believes climate change is a lie, believes her political opponents should be jailed for merely existing, and once likened Black Democrats to slaves. Is it any surprise, then, that she hates trans people? She falsely accused a trans woman of being a mass shooter, labeled Disney “child groomers and pedophiles” for opposing Ron DeSantis’ Don’t Say Gay bill, and has described the queer community as “a sexual plague on our society.”
Starting shortly before her departure from The Daily Wire, Owens began floating a conspiracy theory that Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, is secretly a transgender woman. She continued to espouse this conspiracy in an eight episode series on her YouTube channel called “Becoming Brigitte,” during which she reveals that her primary piece of evidence in this transvestigation is… a picture of Brigitte’s brother, with whom she shares some familial resemblance.
Owens went so far as to say, “I would stake my entire professional career on the fact that Brigitte Macron … was born a man.”
Thankfully, she’s been given that opportunity by the Macrons, who filed a 219-page lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday alleging 22 separate counts of defamation. They describe Owens’ promulgation of conspiracy as a “campaign of global humiliation” against Brigitte, waged in spite of a demand for legal retraction. Indeed, the Macrons’ lead counsel said this was a last resort, that they had endeavored to get Owens to stop lying about Brigitte for over a year behind the scenes to no avail.
“These claims are demonstrably false, and Owens knew they were false when she published them,” the lawsuit says. "[The] reason is clear: it is not the pursuit of truth, but the pursuit of fame. After being fired from The Daily Wire, Owens used these demonstrably false claims to promote her independent podcast, Candance. Owens' fan base has grown to 6.9 million followers on X and 4.47 million subscribers on YouTube. The most popular podcasts in the world have discussed her 'investigation' into the Macrons' history. She launched a revamped website ... fueled by her desire to make these specific false claims about the Macrons."
Committing deeply to thrashing Owens, the lawsuit says of her behavior: “This is nothing new for Owens. She has built a brand on provocation, not truth. Owens labels herself as an independent 'investigative journalist' while routinely peddling misinformation under the guise of legitimate reporting. She has promoted a range of conspiracy theories, including anti-vaccine falsehoods, long debunked antisemitic tropes such as blood libel, and Holocaust distortion—going so far as to dismiss the atrocities of Josef Mengele’s medical experiments as mere 'propaganda.' Her content is not intended to inform but to inflame and attract attention through sensationalism and conspiracy theories.”
What does Owens have to say for herself? She's doubling down. In the latest episode of her YouTube podcast, Owens insists that she won’t back off from the conspiracy, repeatedly misgendering and insulting Brigitte Macron. Now, I’m not a lawyer… but if I were to give Candace Owens some unsolicited advice as a private citizen with no personal courtroom experience, it would be to continue the public ad hominem of the woman litigating against her, no doubt.
The suit is seeking unspecified damages, but personally, I hope that they take her for everything.
Alyssa Steinsiek (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
