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- [00:00]
Sonny Bunch
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Bulwark. I am Sonny Bunch. I am very pleased to be joined today by Will Sommer, who is the author of our False Flag newsletter. It's your must read about everything in the world of crazy online right wing nonsense. Will, we've got a big breaking story here today. Turns out Candace Owens may regret insinuating for the last several years that Emmanuel Marcon's wife used to was a man.
- [00:28]
Will Sommer
Yes, this is a truly bizarre case. This is sort of when my world of the right wing fever swamp sort of collides with international politics. Yeah, so Candace Owens, folks may remember she's kind of like a famous YouTube conservative. She's hugely popular on this platform and many others. And so she had this really long docu series, I think it was eight parts a few months ago, alleging that Brigitte Macron, the wife of the President of France, was trans. But it's not just that she's alleging that. I mean it is truly I had the displeasure of watching. I was like, all right, I gotta figure out the deal. So I locked in and I watched this. And it's not just that Brigitte Macron is trans, but it's like she's maybe Macron's dad. That they're part of this like centuries old medieval cult that like undermines the world. There's all these other accusations and it is truly crazy, but it was also hugely popular. And so, you know, Joe Rogan became convinced that Jeep Macron was trans. All of these other kind of comedians started saying this. And I think this was all also hugely, hugely. I think this is also really popular on TikTok as well. And so, and it really elevated Candace Owens his brand, at least in terms of its size, if not its respectability. And so now the McCrones are saying enough is enough. And they have filed a lawsuit in the US against Candace Owens.
- [01:49]
Sonny Bunch
I want to get into this in a second because it is, the, the actual mechanics of this lawsuit are kind of interesting because they, you know, they're French. This, this lawsuit is taking place in America. You know, it's harder to get libel laws and that sort of thing enforced here. But it, it, I like, I have to say it does seem like a fairly straightforward slam dunk case against Candace Owens. It's insane. Like the videos are insane. I watched some of them myself and I could not believe the things I was seeing in them. What, what, what is her, what is her team's response to this lawsuit?
- [02:31]
Will Sommer
Yeah, so I, I talked recently, since this lawsuit has been filed with someone in Owens's camp. And they say, number one, she hasn't been served yet. That's not huge, not really that big a deal, but that she is. I mean, she's not backing down. I mean, she's supposed to be addressing it on her show, but basically they are not. I mean, they see this as a sort of a Streisand effect situation. Owens is sticking with her guns here. I mean, this is truly, and you know, people were kind of quipping, oh, is it really defamatory to say someone is trans? But it's, this lawsuit is huge. It's nearly 300 pages. And it goes into all of this crazy stuff Owens has said. And she's also, you know, she has said, I'm staking my career on this. This is something I so fervently believe. And she's also really made clear that it has been very financially lucrative for her and really increased her audience. She's posted, you know, look, wow, look how many people watch this docu series. This has been such a big deal. And so that gets into, you know, what are the damages? Was Candace Owens acting in a reckless way to promote her brand? For now, I mean, they say they're sticking with it.
- [03:37]
Sonny Bunch
Now part of, part of this sort of law in America is that you do have to show damages against the individual who has been hurt. Financial damages. Right. If you, if you want to. And I'm curious, what, what, what financial damages they would be able to, to show? Or is it just emotional damage? I mean, is it, is this just, is this just like I am tired of having to deal with being accused of being, of being trans, but also like being the father, like the medieval cult aspect of it. The whole thing is insane.
- [04:11]
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- [05:54]
Will Sommer
You know, basically says that Brij Macron has suffered a lot of, of emotional damage from this. I mean, this idea originated with some like, far right writers in France, and then Candace Owens really picked it up and popularized it and really professionalized these claims. But yeah, I mean, the, the, I mean, I will say the videos are really incredibly, you know, this is an illegal term, but they're very rude. I mean, a lot of Owens evidence is sort of like, I, there are a lot of pictures of Brigitte Macron as a younger woman around the time she was a teacher and, you know, fell in love, such as it is, with, with, with Emmanuel Macron. And, and you know, there are people, a lot of people who knew her back then. And so how does Candace Owens get around this idea that, that all these people knew Brigitte Macron as a woman? And how does she say that this is really a man who has become trans and like stolen an identity and all this stuff. And she says, you know, well, people say she was so hot back then, but look at this picture. Is that really hot? No, she looks ugly. I mean, it's, it's, it's not really the highest standard of evidence that she's using. And so there are all these other, you know, basically she's also implicating Brigitte Macron's brother because she's claiming that the brother is sort of who Brigitte Macron really is and then has adopted the Brigitte identity. So this is something that supposedly has really terrorized the Macron family. And you might say, well, I don't know, it's the president, first lady of France. Are they really that bothered by Candace Owens? But, you know, in one interesting thing that we haven't really talked about here in the past that I, that I chased down was a few weeks ago. Candace Owens claimed that Trump himself called her. Basically a bunch of people in the administration had been telling her to stop talking about the Brigitte Macron trans stuff. And then ultimately that Trump called her and said, look, Macron is holding up the Ukrainian peace process because he's so mad about your YouTube videos. Now, setting aside the Ukrainian peace process stuff, do we think that Macron really approached Trump in person? So she claims. And then that Trump then relayed this to Candace Owens? Well, number one, I kind of don't think she would make that up because, you know, this world is so based on like your proximity to Trump and not lying about it. But then I said, this still has to be fake. So I asked the White House about this and they said, we're not going to comment on Trump's private conversations. So make of that what you will. But I mean, it does appear that these claims have really reached this kind of foreign policy level.
- [08:15]
Sonny Bunch
I'll say it strikes me as a totally reasonable thing to have happen if you are Macron and you are dealing with Donald Trump and you know that Donald Trump is at least in contact with Candace Owens and this thing is really bothering his wife. If something like that was bothering my wife, I would, you know, probably be asked to relay the message. It seems totally reasonable. And I am like, I'm actually kind of fascinated by the MAGA world reaction to this because there has to be, you know, look, on the one hand there, there's the old rally round the flag effect, like you French can't sue our beloved journalists and YouTube stars. That's, that's not. On the other hand, I do think that most of the more respectable elements of this movement have kind of been like, stop talking about this, you sound insane.
- [09:11]
Will Sommer
It does sound insane, you know, but the challenge for them is that if you're someone like Candace Owens who is making this big splashy, deranged claim, I mean, we know that that is how in many ways you get clout on the right, how you build your audience and versus, you know, someone who is more mainstream who might be saying, you know, oh my gosh, I want to talk about the tax cuts or something. I mean, that's boring complaint compared to a centuries long cult that Candace Owens claims to be exposing. And so, yeah, I mean, this is. And she's also someone who is sort of on the outs with a lot of her allies or her erstwhile allies on the right for other reasons. She's very anti Israel. I think her most recent campaign has been attacking Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel. So, I mean, this is not stuff that really like builds a lot of alliances. So she's sort of out here on her own. On the other hand, I mean, it obviously, as you mentioned, winning a libel lawsuit in the United States is very difficult. The other thing to mention here is that she's rep. The Macron have hired Claire Locke, which is sort of the headhunter defamation, libel lawsuit firm. They're the folks who destroyed Gawker on behalf of Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel. So they really got the big guns here.
- [10:23]
Sonny Bunch
Yeah, look. And again, it seems like she will not have the foundational bedrock defense against libel and slander, which is that it's the truth. So we'll be curious to see what effort she's able to put together here. But, you know, I for one wish the Macrones best on their, the best on their, their efforts here because it is, it's really, it's a pretty disgusting thing. I can't, I, every time I see it pop up in my feed, I get annoyed by the person who has put it there, even if they're making fun of the theory in question.
- [11:00]
Will Sommer
It is really vile. I mean, it's even by the standards of this world that I swim in. You know, I want to take a shower after watching these videos. I mean, it is just so gross and it's just so rude and seemingly for no reason beyond sort of advancing the Candace Owens brand, which I think it's been very successful at doing. And it's also the one other thing I'd note here that's interesting is that in the past, if we think about from Pizzagate 2016 to the Dominion lawsuits, which were sparked in 2020, the right wing media was very into these very specific. This guy did it. Dinesha sues the 2000 mules. This guy stole the election, this kind of stuff. But after successful lawsuits, we saw a lot more of a shift away to much more, like the nefarious cabal who we're not going to name or as we're seeing more recently, people like accusing someone who basically is libel proof, like Barack Obama of stealing the election or what have you. But Candace Owens was doing something interesting which was accusing someone quite directly. Perhaps she figured because Brigitte Macron is such a public figure, this wouldn't be an issue. But it is always interesting when these things really sort of hit, you know, when these figures have to face consequences.
- [12:14]
Sonny Bunch
Yeah, well, well, thanks for breaking this down first. I'm sure we'll. There'll be many more stories about this in the weeks to come because Owens has nothing to lose by, by not backing down. She's just going to get more and more famous out of, I mean, I.
- [12:28]
Will Sommer
Will say her, my sense is her husband's very wealthy, but obviously she, she has a company. I mean, we'll have to see. I mean, in the McCrones, of course, with this lawsuit, you do risk fanning the flames. And now these are, this is going to get written up in the New York Times a lot of out that understandably have shied away from addressing these claims in the past.
- [12:45]
Sonny Bunch
Yeah. Yeah. Well, Will, thanks for filling us in.
- [12:49]
Will Sommer
Absolutely.
- [12:50]
Sonny Bunch
And again, I'm Sonny Bunch. Make sure you go subscribe to the Bulwark. Go to the bulwark.com, sign up. You want to get Will's False Flag newsletter. It's the best thing out there. Just keeping track of all this insanity twice a week. It'll make you smile. And make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel and hit like and share it with your friends. You don't want them in the dark about Candace Owens lawsuit here. This is you want them to, you want to be able to chat about it over the water cooler. It's going to be great. It's going to be fun times over the next several months. Here.