The first lady of France, Brigitte Macron has said that she will take legal action after rumors circulated around Twitting claiming that she was born as a man with the name Jean-Michel Trogneux circulated on French Twitter.

She is, obviously, doing this all wrong, but according to The Independent:

French president Emmanuel Macron’s wife, 68-year-old Brigitte Macron, will sue the instigators of the bizarre conspiracy theory, Paris-based newspaper Le Figaro reported.

The rumour started when right-wing journal Faits et Documents published an article in September claiming it had conducted a three-year investigation into Ms Macron, and that their theory was supported by many experts, according to CNews.

According to the British paper Express, the rumor is being spread by typical right-wing conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers.

If Ms. Macron is worried that people actually believe this sh*t, the single best way to handle it is to laughingly say, “If it were true, I would have told you decades ago because I look so fabulous! Unfortunately, it’s not and my beauty is all natural. Too bad, it would’ve made a great story.”

Instead, she calls more attention to the rumor and perhaps gives it a little bit of strength by getting so defensive:

On 10 December, the journalist who claimed to have “investigated” the claims — Natacha Rey —  gave an interview about the theory that lasted almost four hours, according to Numerama. The video was deleted but not before it had gained a viewership of 470,000 people.

https://twitter.com/PMacgoohan/status/1471087171838820358

And everyone knows that the internet checks everything three times to make sure it’s true before anyone allows anything to be published.

Libel laws are different in Europe, it is much easier to sue. And perhaps there were elements of the story that were more mean-spirited than your average hit piece. But it still seems that the easiest way to deal with this is to laugh it off and say if it was true you would have been bragging about it for decades.

French Twitter is truly insane, and it seems they are taking from the same playbook that American right-wingers used against Michelle Obama.

Brigitte Macron = #JeanMichelTrogneux ? pic.twitter.com/2JGSh33Pjt

— En Cause (@EnCausee) December 13, 2021

https://twitter.com/izzy_rip/status/1471114409552527370

https://twitter.com/PaixOfficiel/status/1470741407975550978

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