Becoming Brigitte Episode 2: Candace Owens examines the inaccessible early lives of both Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron
Candace Owens presents the second episode of her Becoming Brigitte series, continuing her investigation into the biographical gaps surrounding French First Lady Brigitte Macron and President Emmanuel Macron.
Summary
Candace Owens opens by noting that the series is trending in France, while the French mainstream media is covering it with hostility — including one outlet that pre-emptively listed "false identity" as a theory before Owens had raised it publicly, which she finds telling. The episode pivots away from the darker material covered previously and focuses instead on the construction of Brigitte Macron's public image through authorized biographies and a government-channel documentary, both of which conspicuously lacked photographs of Brigitte before her teaching years beginning in 1986. Owens then turns to Emmanuel Macron's equally sparse biographical record, drawing on journalist Xavier Pussard's forthcoming book and other mainstream sources to document a pattern of missing photographs, estranged family members, an invented language in a presidential speech, and a striking physical resemblance between Emmanuel Macron and a man identified as Brigitte's nephew — the son of a previously unacknowledged Trogneux sibling named Jean-Michel.
Key Takeaways
KEY TAKEAWAYS
FULL TRANSCRIPT
French Media Reaction and the "False Identity" Slip
Candace Owens: We are trending in France, I can tell you that. Remarkably, we are not getting any fair coverage from their mainstream media apparatus. Check out all these headlines — they are rolling in, and they do seem to be a bit panicked. We can also cut over here for the English speakers so you can see these headlines in English. I personally like the one from Le Matin the best. It reads: "What does conspiracy theorist Candace's absurd and transphobic investigation on Brigitte Macron, which is a hit on YouTube, contain?" I like that they admit it's a hit on YouTube. And also, just a question back to them: how can I be transphobic if Brigitte Macron is not trans? Weird.
Also, this other publication mentioned here — Marianne — right at the bottom, they may have jumped the gun a bit, because it says at the bottom, quote, "All the contemporary theories are covered: pedophilia, satanic delusions, or even false identity." I haven't yet made any claims about a false identity. Weird. What do they know that we don't know? It just seems like the press might know something that the public doesn't know. So we should probably find out what that might be. Welcome back to our series, Becoming Brigitte.
The Media's Construction of Brigitte's Image
All right, guys, I have a fun one for you today. We're taking a break from the very dark world of Brigitte — we did not even cover all of the pedophile stories, but we're just going to take a brief break from that.
One of the biggest mainstream media lies is that the rumors surrounding Brigitte were developed by far-right conspiracy theorists. They keep throwing that word out — "it's a conspiracy, it's a conspiracy" — as though somebody put together a thread on Reddit or on the dark web and that's the reason why people just started believing everything. That is not true. It could not be further from the truth.
So I'm going to recap for you what actually went down in France. It's important to know this. The press, as we mentioned yesterday, intentionally spun a tale of an irresistibly hot and bold Brigitte Macron who was constantly pushing back against the conformity of her stale Catholic upbringing all throughout her life. I'm actually going to read you verbatim some of the published lines from that time, because it is funny — it's actually funny to read how much the mainstream media just lies to us all the time.
Quote: "Around the age of 14 or 15, Brigitte gets bolder. She swaps her navy blue uniform from the austere Sacred Heart School in Amiens — pleated skirt, sweater and tights — for small shorts and a miniskirt. For a while she can forget about her schooling, constrained by Catholic discipline."
Here's another one: "She loves to dance at the surprise parties of the time. She wears tight miniskirts and between two glasses of whiskey and Coke and wild rock and roll songs, she dares to flirt behind the curtains."
Just imagine what is coming into your mind as I read these publications about her growing up. Here's another one, describing Brigitte as a quote "inveterate party girl in an ultra-small kilt who was into rock, dancing to the music of John Lee Hooker until dawn — a rather hectic adolescent, the opposite of the quiet Emmanuel."
Another writer wrote: "The youngest of the Trogneux family has always struck a chord with the public with her contagious good humor, her taste for partying, and her often funny, down-to-earth way of speaking."
Again, of course the goal of all of that was to soften her for having seduced a 14-year-old Emmanuel Macron. Rather, we're supposed to imagine in our minds that Macron had simply hit the jackpot — that he fulfilled the fantasy of every boy his age because he got to sleep with that hot teacher. And they reinforced this narrative by inserting sometimes anonymous quotes from former colleagues of Brigitte and alleged classmates of Emmanuel.
What I'm about to read to you are real quotes that were published in the mainstream press about Brigitte's teaching days:
"Brigitte's class can't believe that the French teacher is celebrating her 40th birthday today. She looks so young in her short skirt and casual manner. To capture the attention of the most distracted, the teacher has another, less academic asset: her legs, showcased in tiny skirts. Brigitte didn't wait to become the First Lady to take great care of her appearance."
"She was a pleasure to look at, not just listen to — always with perfect hair, makeup, and perfume," one student recalls. "The boys are seduced, the girls take her as a role model. All the high school students were in love with her," says Frédérique, from Emmanuel's class.
And from her very vocal daughter Tiphaine — the only child who seems to really defend Brigitte Macron — she included this quote: "When I was a child, I was even jealous of all the students who wrote to her or called her at home."
Then there is another teacher who spoke and went a little bit further. They said: "Brigitte arrived at La Providence wearing a mini-tailleur" — that's like a miniskirt with a jacket, a sports coat — "beautiful, a pinup. One student stresses: 'We were all in love with her.'"
Well, guys, the mainstream media says it's true. I guess it's case closed. We might as well stop this investigation. Hottie with a body — I sure hope I look like whatever that was at the age of 40, with people drooling over themselves.
The Authorized Biography and the Documentary
But it didn't stop there. The case wasn't really closed, because in 2018, a woman named Muriel Beyer — she was then the head of the celebrities department at the magazine Closer — published the official biography of Brigitte Macron, which was entitled Brigitte Macron: La Femme Libre, which means in English "the freed woman." Look at that cover. She's free. Amazing. Look at that face — she's happy, she's glowing.
It was essentially a compilation of everything I just said to you — everything that had already been published. And I'll tell you why this was immediately considered a departure from previous authorized biographies of a First Lady or president: there were absolutely no pictures provided of Brigitte Macron as a child, and there were no pictures provided of her as a young mother. In fact, the earliest picture in this authorized biography was from 1993, when Brigitte was already teaching at the Providence school. Here it is — this is the earliest photo they included. The caption beneath that photo read: "Brigitte Auzière is 40. She's married, she's the mother of three, she's quite appreciated at the high school where she teaches. She's about to make the encounter that will cause an upheaval of her life."
So they just went ahead and decided to erase the first 40 years in this official biography.
Then, six months later, in June of 2018, a woman by the name of Virginia Linhard — who normally focused on creating documentaries about World War II and the Holocaust — essentially turned the biography of Brigitte into a documentary entitled Brigitte Macron: Un Roman Français, which just means "a French novel." That was released on the France 3 channel. Now, I should mention that this is a government-owned channel — it was created in 1969 by the Office of the President. This is like PBS, like the BBC. We are not in conspiracy land. This is a reputable woman, Virginia Linhard, who makes documentaries.
And of course, documentaries are supposed to include a ton of photos. Think about whatever you were watching when you were coming up — for me, maybe Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera documentaries, just filled with photos: their siblings, them at Disney World, doing whatever was normal for the time they were growing up. A Michael Jackson documentary — tons of photos, siblings. And I want to be clear: Virginia Linhard did have tons of photos, just almost all of them again from Brigitte's teaching days, beginning in 1986 in Strasbourg and ending in Paris in 2015.
So I'm going to show you the photos that were in this documentary — first just showing you this collage of all of the photos. And I'm just not seeing that teacher I was reliably informed about. I was reliably informed that Brigitte Auzière was a hot, sexy pinup girl with irresistible legs who wore miniskirts, the kind of woman the boys just couldn't look away from. She also seems strangely to be wearing a scarf in a lot of these authorized photos. Why was she always covering her neck? That's kind of weird.
Virginia Linhard's Account of the Investigation
Virginia Linhard, the documentary maker, is well respected, so surely she must have tried to get many more photos before Brigitte's teaching years. If she's not a fraud, that would have been the first thing she would have tried to do. Interestingly enough, she spoke out regarding just how difficult it was for her to make the documentary. She said, and I quote:
"It's difficult to investigate Brigitte Macron — much more than I imagined, on the substance, on the form, on everything. As soon as I started making contacts, I was summoned by Pierre-Olivier Costa, Brigitte's chief of staff, and Tristan Bromet, Brigitte's other chief of staff. It was almost like a police interrogation: what do I want to show, who will I be interviewing? I made a list of people that I wanted to meet, but I could not apply that list. The interviewees, apart from her former students, all had the authorization of the Élysée Palace and were very careful about what they said. There is a thick wall of silence. The level of control and checking is quite astounding. My documentary is a 90-minute, very personal portrait. For it, I needed photographs of young Brigitte Macron — small children — that would show an itinerary, not those approved by Best Image agency. What won't be released is anything to do with her former life. It's a total blackout."
Oh — Best Image agency. Didn't we just go over that yesterday? That's Mimi's agency that was authorizing the photos that were allowed to go out. So apparently Mimi Marchand's agency authorized the photos that could go out for this documentary as well.
The Two Childhood Photos — and the Questions They Raised
Now, Virginia Linhard did however receive two photos from Brigitte's alleged childhood. One — the public was told — was from Brigitte Trogneux's first communion. I'm going to show you that photo. And another — the now infamous photo of the entire Trogneux family, allegedly taken about a year after Brigitte's birth.
So now, really, all that was missing from that communion photo until the school photos appearing in 1986 was 23 years of Brigitte's life — the most crucial years of her life. Like, I don't know — her being a teenager, her getting married at 21, her allegedly having three babies, her getting married to a banker named André-Louis Auzière who was her husband of 32 years. Did people not take photos of them and their husbands in France?
Virginia Linhard actually referred to André-Louis Auzière — Brigitte's alleged husband of 32 years — as "the French Republic's best kept secret." And certainly it appeared that way, because at the time the documentary was released, there was only one photo available of her ex-husband that had even made its way onto Wikipedia. There it is — André-Louis Auzière. You can see it has his date of birth, his date of death, and the dates they were married: 1974 to 2006. All of that is correct, except for the photo itself.
It turned out that photo was not actually André-Louis Auzière, because a former student who had gone on to become a politician — his name is François Ruffin, who also went to Providence school — came out and said: that's not André-Louis Auzière, that's Mr. Hugo, a teacher at the school. Oopsies. But that oopsie did make the public think: what's going on here? This is kind of getting weird.
And I have to tell you, there was some immediate feedback from the public — some early musings, if you will — about the two photos that had been released from Brigitte's alleged childhood. Foremost, the communion photo caused a bit of a stir, because many felt that it was a dead ringer — not for First Lady Brigitte Macron, who was shown side by side — but for her very chatty daughter Tiphaine. They thought that looks like Tiphaine. And like I said, she was the only child of Brigitte who was willing to participate in the documentary — she was willing to speak to Virginia for about an hour.
And it doesn't help that Best Image, the photo agency, had supplied the image. People were wondering — and I include myself in this — was it perhaps edited? Now, Mimi Marchand, as we learn later on, has been accused of a lot of forgery and all sorts of crimes. So it's not totally crazy to wonder if maybe she's being used, because she does play around a bit and she's willing to do crimes.
That was, in fact, one of the areas of nitpick that the Macrons had included when they initially sent me the first strongly worded letter, because I had claimed on a show dating back to March of last year that the photo was recolored. I looked at it and said that photo looks too new, it looks like it's been recolored. Now, having gone much deeper on the facts, I now know for a fact that that photo was not recolored.
Similarly, at the beginning, when I was trying to understand this case, I had asked Xavier Pussard about the theory — which a lot of people were wondering about — which was: did the real Brigitte Trogneux die when she was a child, and did perhaps Brigitte Macron take her identity? Again, that was floating around the internet, and I now know for a fact that no, she did not die when she was a child.
The Macron Legal Letter
So let's go back and take a look at their first carefully worded legal letter to me. This is their repeat strategy — I'm going to keep reminding you of this. The way that they sue people, the way that they go after people in court, is they ignore the substance of the claims. The substance being: was current First Lady Brigitte Macron born a biological male? It's a simple yes or no question. And instead of attacking that, they wait for people to make a mistake as they try to garner the answer. And of course mistakes will be made. You could say this photo is recolored, and they go — go after her. She's suggesting that Brigitte Trogneux died as a child — go after her.
So this is the legal letter they wrote. It says: "Your discrediting of these photos is not only without merit but also internally inconsistent. In your episode on March 11th and March 13th and June 17th, you claim that the first communion photo is an altered image of Tiphaine Auzière. However, in your August 30th podcast, you agreed with Pussard that the photo depicts the real Brigitte Trogneux before she passed away at a young age — another falsehood."
Now I want to be very clear: Xavier Pussard has never said that Brigitte Trogneux passed away at a young age. But I may have asked him the question and was speculating about whether she passed away, which they claim is another falsehood. Then they say: "Both hypotheses could not be further from the truth. Moreover, you alleged that the first communion photo had been debunked repeatedly and that the press now states its attribution to Mrs. Macron was a mistake, but you have not cited any outlets or articles retracting the photo. Surely you would provide this devastating proof if you had it, but you do not."
Why do they not simply state who the person in the communion photo is? Why not just say plainly — if you're going to write a legal letter — "Candace, the person in this communion photo is not Tiphaine Auzière, and the photo is not recolored, and it is in fact First Lady Brigitte Macron"? They don't do that. They never do that. Why not simply state what the truth is, rather than saying that the hypotheses are far from the truth?
So of course, now we're about a year on. I'm now armed with a much fuller picture of what happened, what the truth might really be. And my legal team, as you remember, included a very straightforward yes or no question back to them — back to the couple, in good faith — regarding the girl in the communion photo. I rewrote this: number four — "Is the little girl pictured in the communion photograph, allegedly from 1963, the Brigitte Macron that is currently married to President Macron?"
You guys know what happens next. No response. No response. They're angry you said it was recolored, you said Brigitte Trogneux had died when she was a child — that's defamation, that's false information. But we can't tell you what the truth is. They knew by then, in terms of how specific my questions were getting, that I was on to them — that I had worked through the investigation, that I had arrived at more correct conclusions, that I was doing less musing. Not for a single second did we believe they were going to answer our questions, and they have not yet. They just send us more letters and more ridiculous things where they don't assert what the truth actually is.
The Trogneux Family Photo and the Unaccounted-For Boy
Now, regarding the second photo of Brigitte's alleged childhood which the documentary presented — the full Trogneux family photo of them in Amiens — observations were immediately made by the public. People are allowed to think. They are allowed to have thoughts. They are allowed to ask questions.
First and foremost, people thought they were being told that Brigitte is this little girl in the lap of her mother, sitting in the front. But the public, just quickly taking a glance, thought: wait a second, Brigitte looks more like that little boy on the far left. And wait a second — who is that little boy on the far left? He's completely unaccounted for.
Leading up to this moment, despite so much press surrounding Brigitte — her life, her married life, her being a teacher — despite entire genealogical websites dedicated to her family, there was no mention on these genealogical websites or in the press of the boy on the far left. So that became the dog that wasn't barking.
For clarity, there had been only one brother publicly accounted for — Brigitte's older brother. He is the one standing in the back: that is Jean-Claude. And the interested public were now being introduced suddenly to a second, mysterious brother, and they would find out that his name was Jean-Michel Trogneux.
Emmanuel Macron's Equally Sparse Biography
I'm going to take a brief pause here before I bring in Emmanuel Macron's strange story.
All right, guys, we're just warming up again. It feels like we're falling down a hole. And again, these are all mainstream journalists. So I don't know what I did wrong here by presenting it to the world so they could see that something weird has been going on in France for quite some time. Rather than the mainstream media being interested in it, they just keep smearing everybody as far-right conspiracy theorists. Every journalist I've mentioned thus far is on the left. In fact, many of these people were excited about giving Brigitte a platform because they themselves are feminists, and they said: let me profile this woman. And then they realized something is very wrong here — something I cannot — why am I being called in to the Élysée Palace? What have I done wrong? Why does this feel like a police interrogation? I'm just trying to ask some questions.
But it's not just Brigitte. Let's discuss Emmanuel Macron's biography, because it's pretty interesting. The story goes that he, like Brigitte, was born in Amiens. Amiens is the capital city within the department of Somme. In France they call these departments — I like to think of departments as states if you're from America. So think of Amiens as the capital of the state of Somme. Amiens also has a ton of history going back to the Middle Ages, because it is the ancient capital of Picardy — which just means northern France. I'm telling you that for a reason.
Now, jumping into his biography, I am going to read directly from journalist Xavier Pussard's forthcoming book. He writes:
"Emmanuel Macron remains a mystery to those who went to school with him. His former classmates describe him as 'the only one we didn't know anything about — neither where he spent his vacations nor what his parents did for a living.' They describe him as a loner, not much socialized, not gathering others around him. Later, at the school Henri IV, he stayed in the background, elusive. 'He maintained an air of mystery, a parallel life of which we knew nothing. No one knows of any close friends among his 48 fellow students. He had a very striking, chameleon-like manner.'"
Emmanuel Macron's early life before he met Brigitte is similarly a black hole. Journalists who have tried to cover the subject have all fallen back on cross-portraits for lack of material — testimonials, photographs, etc. The information that could be gathered can be summed up in a few lines.
Xavier goes on: "Born on December 21st, 1977, in Amiens, Emmanuel Macron spent his childhood on Rue Gauthier de Rumilly, a street in Henriville, which is the upscale district of Amiens, in a house that was bought in 1982 by his parents — Jean-Michel Macron, a neuropsychiatrist at Amiens University Hospital from a Picard family, and Françoise Noguès, his mother, a pediatrician who became an expert for Social Security."
Just going to pause before I jump into Xavier's script here, so we get the picture. His dad is a psychiatrist, his mom is a doctor to children. Interesting combo. That's all I'm saying for right now, but I'm going to say a lot more.
Her family originates — this is Françoise Noguès, his mother — from Bagnères, in the Hautes-Pyrénées region. I'm going to talk about that later. The couple had two more children: Emmanuel born in 1977, then Laurent born in 1979, his brother, and Estelle, his sister, born in 1982 — all born within five years of one another. Both physicians before divorcing in 2010. Emmanuel Macron also has a half-brother, his name is Gabriel, born in 2005 from his father's second marriage to a woman named Hélène Jolly, also a psychiatrist at the Institute of Educational Medicine in Poitiers.
Now, in 2017, Emmanuel Macron released his own autobiography, entitled Revolution. That similarly provided very few, scant details about his background. It was actually Sylvie Bommel, an independent journalist who writes for Vanity Fair — again, we aren't on Reddit threads, we're not on the deep web — who summed up his autobiography this way:
"In Revolution, Emmanuel devotes five pages to his maternal grandmother, only one to his parents, and two lines to his brother Laurent and his sister Estelle. Nor is there any mention of his half-brother Gabriel, born in 2005 from his father's second marriage, and even less of his father's companion Hélène. Conversely, he scrupulously mentions the first names of Brigitte's three children and their spouses, as well as those of her seven grandchildren."
She has since had an eighth. On the day of the inauguration, the Auzières were the only ones to tread the red carpet leading up to the Élysée Palace — Tiphaine and Laurence, blonde, slim and elegant, and their brother Sébastien, all accompanied by their spouses and their children.
The estrangement is reciprocal. In 2014, a colleague of his brother Laurent at the hospital asked him if Macron — working with François Hollande at the time at the Élysée Palace — was a close relative. "No, he's a vague cousin. Everyone's bugging me about this guy," replied his brother Laurent. Okay, maybe Laurent just didn't want to be asked questions about a minister and just said that. Weird.
Then a woman named Nicole, a first cousin of Emmanuel's mother Françoise Noguès, similarly told a reporter that she hardly ever saw Emmanuel's alleged sister Estelle. That's very weird.
Sylvie Bommel again — the Vanity Fair writer, reputable mainstream media — also said this:
"I had a hard time finding Emmanuel's friends. He never talked about his family. We are hard pressed to find any photos of his early years. When, as a grown-up, he launched his presidential campaign, many political analysts noted that his communications were inspired by Obama. Even if this is the case, he has neglected his early childhood. Anyone interested in the former United States President Obama can have, with emotion, baby Barack in a romper suit, the chubby kid wielding his first baseball bat, the kid with two holes where he just lost his baby teeth, watching him grow up. Our president's photo album begins in his tenth year. The shot was taken in the choir of the chapel of the Providence school, with Emmanuel reading a passage from the Bible. Around his neck, a shiny medal worn for the first time marks the day of his baptism at age twelve. François and Jean-Michel have a distant relationship with religion — of course they were married in a church to enjoy the pomp of the event and gather their families, but they never considered having the baby baptized."
Wow. Life starts at age twelve in photos. That's a bit weird.
Here are the three photos she's referring to — which were widely considered to be the first known photos of Emmanuel Macron: one from his baptism, one from his seventh grade year at Providence, and a third from his studies. It's almost like he grew up in the Providence school with Brigitte.
Oddly, however, I should mention that when Xavier Pussard kept digging, he did find some uncredited and seemingly unauthorized photos that appeared in — you guessed it — Paris Match, one of Mimi Marchand's favorite publications, in May of 2017, when we know Mimi Marchand, the PR fixer, was running comms for them. So in May of 2017, these photos appeared. We're seeing a kid — the captions tell us this is Emmanuel Macron when he was three years old. He's reading Sylvester and Tweety, he's got this crazy blonde hair, and the one at the bottom right is supposed to be him at his father's office of medicine. And you'll notice that again, in these young photos, there are no photos of him with his siblings. Who authorized these photos? They're literally not credited in that magazine issue. And they are never again included in any biography — whether it's an autobiography, an authorized biography, or an unauthorized biography. We don't get to see those photos again.
Macron's Disputed Roots and the Invented Language
So to recap: the Macron side of the family is supposed to have deep roots in Amiens. They're supposed to be Picard. Yet when another journalist — a gay journalist named Hervé Algalarrondo, and why I'm telling you he's openly gay is not to call him out, but because don't forget a big piece of what the media says is that everybody's LGBTQ-phobic, that's the reason why anybody is even saying anything about Brigitte — well, this guy certainly is not. Hervé Algalarrondo made what is likely the greatest effort to look into Emmanuel Macron's upbringing in his investigative book — in English, Two Young French Women — and he similarly found some really odd things.
Foremost, the former mayor of Amiens — a man named Gilles de Robien, who was close with the Trogneux family because Amiens is close-knit, and therefore in no way was trying to shade them or harm them — said this about Emmanuel Macron: "Macron is not Amiénois, he is Touquettois." Meaning he's not from the town of Amiens, he's like from Le Touquet, which is a seaside town in France. What did he mean by that? Is he suggesting that Macron was not from Amiens at all? Because that would be weird. Why wouldn't a city mayor in which the president of France was born want to take full credit for his birth? Maybe he just meant that Macron spent more of his time outside of the city. I don't know what he meant by this, but he said it.
People even called into question Macron's interest in his own birthplace of Amiens, because from that very same book we find out that Emmanuel Macron "skipped the commemoration, while he was in office, of the centenary of the Battle of Amiens on August 8th, 2018. The Amiens-born Macron was conspicuously absent while Theresa May, then the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Prince William, one of Queen Elizabeth's grandsons, were present." The English had stood shoulder to shoulder with the French in the battle of World War I, the start of the Allies' victorious offensive. Emmanuel Macron did not attend the celebration, even though his family's birthplace — Ailly — was on the front line of another famous battle, the Battle of the Somme, and the castle housed a field hospital, and even though he knows full well, as he has mentioned in several speeches, that Picardy still bears the scars of the wars against Germany.
Okay, maybe he was busy that day. Let's not get too crazy.
Also, I should mention that before Emmanuel had entered the political scene in 2012, he had considered running for municipal office — but never in the Picardy region, only in Pas-de-Calais, which is further north. That's the same Pas-de-Calais that Brigitte worked within as a press secretary. Maybe that's why. Maybe they were already in the midst of their affair. I'm not sure.
And then it's just about to get outright embarrassing, when you consider the massive blunder made by President Emmanuel Macron in regards to the other side of his family roots — the Noguès side, his mom's side. Françoise Noguès, his mother — her family traces back to the town of Bagnères, in the Hautes-Pyrénées region. Think of the Pyrenees Mountains — they basically border Spain and France, so there are a few different spoken languages in that region historically.
So Macron, in his presidential capacity, goes to visit Andorra in 2018, and he presents himself as a child of the Pyrenees. This exchange happened between him and an Andorran national official, his name was Xavier Luciani, and it was captured by a journalist from L'Express magazine — because in presidential travel, there's a pool of journalists that travel with them, recording and listening to conversations. And the journalist writes that Macron said this:
"I had great-grandparents who were Bordons. They only spoke Pénan. Their sole aim in life was that my grandmother would attend a state school to learn French. Think about it."
So he's opening up here. We know he was close to his grandmother — he wrote the most about his grandmother in his book. He's saying that his grandmother's parents' sole aim was for her to stop speaking Pénan and go to a state school and learn French. And he goes: "Think about it." Think about how amazing — now he's president of France, and that was all his great-grandparents wanted for his beloved grandmother.
And you know what that Andorran politician did? Thought about it — probably not for very long — because it turns out that Pénan is not and has never been a language. That is just amazing. Nobody knew what he was talking about. They're going: what are you talking about? Pénan? That's not a thing. People here speak a bunch of different languages, and that's not one of them. It's Occitan, Catalan — nobody speaks Pénan. What are you trying to say? So he just made up a piece of his childhood. That was real weird. Real weird to be emotionally attached to a language that never existed.
Macron Turns to Brigitte to Answer Questions About His Own Sister
Anyway, back to the journalist Hervé Algalarrondo. He tried desperately thereafter to speak to anyone in the Macron family, but they were as thick as thieves — shot down, shot down, shot down. Then there was an official in Bagnères who gave him an idea. The idea that came across his mind was: you know what, I want to learn about Emmanuel Macron's history — I should speak to Brigitte. Weird, right?
The reason why this idea popped into his mind was that that official told him that when Emmanuel Macron had visited Bagnères — out of civility, making conversation — he asked Emmanuel Macron about his sister Estelle, because she lived nearby. And apparently Emmanuel Macron turned to Brigitte to know what to answer. He turned to his wife to know what to answer about his sister.
I don't know about how you guys are feeling right now, but I'm starting to get a little icky feeling. It's all starting to feel a bit incestuous to me. Like, why does she know so much? And why is he more into her family? It's very weird.
Jean-Michel Trogneux and the Resemblance to Macron
She probably paused there, but for fun I am going to tease you with these two photos. And I want you guys to know — this is real, this is not made up — because next episode we're going to get into Jean-Michel Trogneux, the sibling that has now suddenly appeared for the first time. The public is being made aware of him, and Jean-Michel Trogneux allegedly has a son. Allegedly, this guy — whoever he is, Jean-Michel Trogneux, who seems to be missing — has a son named Jean-Jacques, who is not missing. Jean-Jacques is not missing.
And I'm going to give you a side-by-side of Jean-Jacques and Emmanuel Macron. Okay. And here's another one of Jean-Jacques and Emmanuel Macron. Now, these two are not related. The one on the left is allegedly Brigitte — who claims she is not Jean-Michel Trogneux. That's allegedly Brigitte's nephew — that is Jean-Michel Trogneux's son. This is not the Macron side of the family. This is the Trogneux side of the family. And that's her husband. And it is just amazing. It is just amazing.
But ladies and gentlemen, do not believe your own eyes. Do not believe your own eyes. You know what we should do in this next episode? We have absolutely got to get into his grandmother — the one who at some point, I guess, must have spoken Pénan. Because then things are going to start to get really interesting. And then we're going to learn a bit more about his mom, his dad the psychiatrist, and some things that he kind of left out about them — and specifically, what kind of work were these psychiatrists and pediatricians involved in? And then maybe we're going to start patching in some ideas about what might have been going on politically at that time while he was growing up. And this is going to turn into a scary story.