Donald Trump has launched one of his most vicious attacks yet on former ally Candace Owens, branding her an “extremely low IQ individual” and sharing a mocked-up Time magazine cover labelling her “Vile Person of the Year” — the latest escalation in a feud between two figures who were once firmly on the same political side.
The president posted the image on Truth Social on Friday, accompanied by a caption targeting Owens over her ongoing legal battle with French First Lady Brigitte Macron, whom the right-wing commentator has repeatedly and falsely claimed was born male. “Candace Owens’ stock, which was never very high, has fallen a long way,” Trump wrote. “Her attack on the First Lady of France is despicable. I believe, in this case, without verification, she is an extremely low IQ individual.”
The mocked-up magazine cover, designed to resemble Time’s Person of the Year edition, included fake headlines accusing Owens of lying, using “rich white men” and protecting sex offenders, as well as claiming she had a “0% fact check ratio on all credible fact checking sites.”
The attack comes days after Owens went considerably further on her own show, questioning on air whether Trump himself was “gay” and suggesting he had slept with Brigitte Macron “when he was a man,” according to Mediaite. Trump had dismissed her earlier as “crazy,” writing online that the French First Lady was “a far more beautiful woman than Candace — in fact, it’s not even close.”
The two had previously been close, with Owens a vocal and prominent Trump supporter for years. That relationship began to fracture over her criticism of his handling of the Iran conflict, and collapsed entirely after she publicly said she was “embarrassed” to support him. The feud has since escalated into a prolonged and increasingly personal exchange of insults.
At the centre of the wider controversy is a 218-page defamation lawsuit filed in Delaware by Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron against Owens on 23 July 2025, seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. In a statement at the time, the couple said Owens had been given repeated opportunities to retract her claims and had refused. “Ms Owens’s campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety,” they said. “It is our earnest hope that this lawsuit will set the record straight and end this campaign of defamation once and for all.”
Owens has not backed down. She claimed to have based her allegations on research by French blogger Natacha Rey, and announced in September last year that she intended to escalate the lawsuit by seeking a “third-party examination” of Brigitte Macron. She has also previously claimed that Trump called her personally to ask her to stop targeting the French First Lady — a claim the White House has not confirmed.
