In a wide-ranging interview with Paris Match published Tuesday, August 19, French President Emmanuel Macron shared his thoughts on the heated peace talks between Russia and Ukraine under United States mediation ("We got President Trump to change his mind") as well as the strength of his relationship with his prime minister, François Bayrou, who could be toppled in the fall over the 2026 state budget ("He is my friend [...] and I believe the plan that he proposed, which we prepared together at length [...], is a good plan").

In a rare move, the president, between these two major topics, also addressed the persistent rumor targeting his wife, Brigitte Macron. Since 2017, the first lady has been the target of a defamatory campaign on social media alleging that she was born a man. Outraged by this falsehood, a parasite to both his reputation and his private life, the president said he intends to see through the legal actions he and his wife have initiated to hold the main purveyors of these lies accountable, in both France and the US.

"This is about defending my honor! Because it is nonsense," the French leader told Paris Match, justifying his unprecedented counterattack for a sitting president by pointing to the explosive spread of this false rumor, which over time has become embedded in a global conspiracy movement. "It has reached such a scale in the United States that we had no choice but to respond. It is a matter of upholding the truth. We are talking about the civil status of the first lady of France, a wife, a mother, a grandmother. Wanting to prevent the restoration of the truth is not freedom of speech," Macron said.

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