00:00Fake Claims About Brigitte Macron Persist Online
00:03French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte filed a defamation lawsuit against US alt-right podcaster Candace Owens in July.
00:15The couple's lawyers accused her of leading an online crusade based around her assertion that Brigitte is, quote, in fact, a man.
00:22Owens is accused of making these fake claims go viral internationally.
00:26However, the fake claim first went viral in 2021.
00:30Self-proclaimed journalist Natasha Ray alleged that Brigitte Macron was born a man named Jean-Michel Trognu, which is her brother's name, during a four-hour YouTube interview with spiritual medium Amandine Roy.
00:42Despite these theories being debunked, this fake news continues to gain mass traction online, spread by conspiratorial accounts.
00:50For example, a video starred as a TV news report recently surfaced on social media, alleging that a surgeon named François Fèvre, who had information about Brigitte's gender-changing operation, mysteriously fell out of a window in Paris on the 29th of June.
01:06But Euroverify found the opening shots were from AFP footage filmed in 2022.
01:12Meanwhile, the American hospital in Paris told Euroverify that it has no records of a surgeon named François Fèvre.
01:19Given he barely blinks in the video, his speech is likely AI-generated.
01:23Other female public figures, such as Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris, have also been the victims of similar social media campaigns, which have been dubbed transvestigations by researchers.
01:35Transvestigations often rely on what is assumed to be telltale signs of physiology that betray somebody's sex assigned at birth.
01:47Like with many conspiracy theories, despite a total lack of proof that Brigitte Bagrand is a man, the online fascination with this story has kept the rumor alive.
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