P.T. Barnum once said “no publicity is bad publicity,” but hard to tell if the conspiracy-peddling Candace Owens would agree or disagree today.
The conservative contrarian’s “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions” that French First Lady Brigitte Macron was born a man are totally false, a lawsuit filed Wednesday by France President Emmanuel Macron and his spouse assert. The Élysée Palace occupants allege that Owens incessantly attacked the couple “to promote her independent platform, gain notoriety, and make money,”
It’s an effort that the Macrons and their Tom Clare-led U.S. lawyers have to admit is working out for MAGA-courting Owens with her podcast loyalists, YouTube watchers and millions of social media followers. Owens “has built a brand on provocation, not truth,” the defamation suit bluntly says.
“The clicks kept coming, so Owens kept going, seizing every opportunity to promote her salacious claims,” exclaims the near unprecedented action filed Wednesday in Delaware state court. “Rather than engage with President and Mrs. Macron’s attempts to set the record straight, Owens mocked them and used them as additional fodder for her frenzied fan base, the filing adds in one of its few understated moments. Full of tales of incest, murder, criminal conspiracy, the CIA’s MKUltra mind control program, cameos by the far-right barber choir of “Charlie Kirk, Alex Jones, Nigel Farage, and even Kanye West, and references to Owens’ old employer the Daily Wire, the très vif 22-count complaint seeks a jury trial and a plethora of what will likely be deep pocket damages.
Having goaded the French First Couple to sue her for months on her Becoming Brigitte series, Owens did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on Wednesday’s suit from the Macrons. it seems she is likely to respond on her podcast later today. Still, busy as she is right now leading the uprising and uproar over Donald Trump‘s DOJ not releasing the full Jeffrey Epstein files, Owens can’t say she didn’t know the defamation action was coming, according to the Macrons’ attorneys.
Hell, even Joe Rogan knew it was coming. “She’s got a six-hour presentation on how Brigitte Macron is a man,” the ex-Fear Factor frontman said on his Joe Rogan Experience in early April. Rogan went on to say “I think she’s right,” before adding: “Instead of trying to give her money to shut the fuck up, they would sue her.” For the record, the Macrons and their reps say they never ever ever attempted to pay Owens off to back off – in fact, they say the complete opposite.
“As detailed in the complaint, the filing of this lawsuit follows three separate retraction demands sent to Ms. Owens in the last year containing incontrovertible evidence disproving her allegations and proving, among other things, that Mrs. Macron was born a woman named Brigitte Trogneux, that she is not a blood relative of President Macron, and that the Macrons are not being controlled or blackmailed by unknown forces,” noted Virginia-based lawyer Clare in a statement released at the same time the lawsuit was filed. “To make matters worse, many others have republished her lies, thereby increasing their global audience and the emotional and reputational harm they have caused,” he added.
Even with all the detailing in the 219-page filing of how Owens’ attack have injured “confidence in the Macrons’ integrity and fitness as political and governmental leaders” and their “reputations have been impugned,” the Macrons’ move does have more than a whiff of the kind of action their on-and-off pal Trump regularly takes against media he doesn’t like or feels criticizes or mocks him.
C’est dommage.
Unlike Trump, the Macrons appear quite willing to show up in court if need be in this case, I hear.
