French President Emmanuel Macron finally broke his silence about his defamation lawsuit against controversial media personality Candace Owens, who has repeatedly claimed that the First Lady of France, Brigitte Macron, is a man.
Speaking to French outlet Paris Match, Macron explained why he and his wife decided to take legal action against Owens following her numerous claims that Brigitte is actually a man named “Jean-Michel Trogneux.”
READ MORE: French President Macron Sues Candace Owens in Ill-Advised Attempt to Defend His Wife’s Honor
“This has become such a big issue in the United States that we had to respond,” Macron told the outlet in a piece published Tuesday, according to Politico. “It’s a question of having the truth respected.”
“[Owens] is someone who knew very well that she was spreading false information and did so with the aim of causing harm, in the service of an ideology and with established connections to far-right leaders,” he added, per the outlet.
Macron admitted that when Owens’ accusations first surfaced in France, they opted to ignore them so as not to have the opposite effect of drawing more attention to the claims by shutting them down. But he said that after the podcaster’s accusations spread in the United States, they had no other choice.
As my RedState colleague Streiff reported in July, Macron filed a defamation suit against the podcaster.
He wrote:
According to a 200-page complaint filed in a Delaware court, the Macrons object to Owens’s claim that Brigitte Macron “was born a man, stole another person’s identity, and transitioned to become Brigitte.”
The report also noted that this wasn’t the first time the Macrons had to deal with the claims.
In 2021, the Macrons successfully sued two of France’s leading intellectuals, Amandine Roy, a 52-year-old clairvoyant, and Natacha Rey, 48, who styled herself as a freelance journalist, for making the claim that Brigitte Macron = (more or less) Jean-Michel Trogneux. Despite their victory in court, the Macrons have not been able to silence those seeking to speak truth, or something, to power.
A spokesperson for Owens reacted to the suit by claiming it was a violation of her First Amendment rights. The person claimed it was a “foreign government attacking the First Amendment rights of an American independent journalist.”
But in the Paris Match interview, the French President objected to the claim and said that freedom of speech does not protect Owens from spreading false, harmful “nonsense.”
He added, “Those talking about so-called freedom of speech are the same ones banning reporters from the Oval Office.”
ALSO: AP Clutches Pearls After White House Responds Accordingly to Judge’s Order to Restore Their Access
The last jab was clearly a reference to the White House’s decision earlier this year to block the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One due to how it was covering President Donald Trump’s Gulf of America name change.
The AP took President Donald Trump’s administration to court over it, and in June, Trump won a partial victory, as RedState reported.
A federal appeals court panel on Friday reinstated parts of President Donald Trump’s ban of the Associated Press from several key areas where presidential press events are typically held, including the Oval Office, Air Force One and the President’s home in Mar-A-Lago.
The court left in place part of a lower-court order that required Trump to give AP access to events held in larger spaces, like the East Room.
This Macron-Owens story is sure to have more pieces before it is all ironed out. Check back to RedState for updates.
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