Find out how French President Emmanuel Macron criticizes the MAGA movement and freedom of expression in the U.S. in this controversy.
A recent interview
French President Emmanuel Macron launched a thinly veiled dig at his American counterpart Donald Trump, in a recent interview with Paris Match magazine.
The hypocrisy of the MAGA
In it, Macron denounces the hypocrisy of the MAGA movement, and indirectly of its leader Donald Trump, on free speech, even as he has taken legal action against Candace Owens for her repeated attacks claiming that his wife Brigitte... would be a man.
The lawsuit
The French president's statements come as he has recently filed a defamation suit against Candace Owens, whom he accuses of spreading odious falsehoods about his wife and ignoring the irrefutable evidence presented to stop her spreading these lies.
A personal twist
The attack by Candace Owens, a far-right podcaster close to the MAGA movement and Donald Trump, known for her conspiracy theories and media polemics, takes a personal turn for the French president, who justifies his legal action by declaring:
Honor
"It's about defending my honor! Because it's all nonsense."
Such a scale
Macron asserts that he wants the truth to be respected, and stresses that the problem "has reached such proportions in the United States that we have a duty to react", while denouncing the double-speak of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, as well as Candace Owens' defense, which accuses him of wanting to restrict the First Amendment rights of an American journalist.
"those who talk to you about this so-called freedom of speech"
To this criticism, the French president retorted that "those who talk to you about this so-called freedom of speech are the ones who ban journalists from the Oval Office. I don't accept that", a scathing retort aimed at the President of the United States.