Is it true that Macron's lover died of AIDS?

In April 2025, it was reported that an AIDS activist in Africa claimed that his brother, who died from the disease, had sex with the President of France. We have verified the accuracy of this story.

In RuNet, the most viral publications about the death of Emmanuel Macron’s alleged lover appeared on April 2 in the Telegram channel of TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov. “A new scandal related to rumors about the gayness of French President Emmanuel Macron is gaining momentum in France. Local media report that Macron's alleged lover died of AIDS. "During an interview about the AIDS epidemic on the African continent, a shocking confession was made. Raoul Fleming, a well-known AIDS activist in Africa, said that his brother Dimitri, who died from the disease, had sexual relations with French President Emmanuel Macron. According to him, his brother led a rather stormy sex life, which was dominated by relationships with men. He even claims that his brother entered into intimate relationships with Macron after President's visit to Saint Martin in 2018, a photo was taken during this meeting that later went viral." it says in Solovyov’s channel (219,000 views at the time of writing this analysis). The publication was accompanied by a short video of the same interview. Later on the TV presenter's channel news turned on to the list of the main events of that day (204,000 views).

According to the TGStat service, in total, such Russian-language posts received about 750,000 views. For example, they were posted by the channels "Dmitry Vasilets" (136,000 views) and "The goat screamed"(80,000). The viral video was shared among the media “News", "Ren-TV" And etc.. Publications about the death of Macron’s lover are found in “VKontakte", Facebook, Instagram, LiveJournal (examples here And here), X, TikTok And Cont. In addition, this news was widely circulated English (in X, the post by user @peacemaket71 received 715,000 views), Spanish (@isaacrrr7, 1 million) and other languages.

Although Solovyov’s Telegram channel claims that this interview allegedly caused a scandal in France and that local media are writing about it, Verified did not find any reports of the death of Macron’s alleged HIV-infected lover in any major French publications. However, the news is really distributed French right-wing bloggers whose posts recruited millions of views.

In such publications, as in the post on Solovyov’s channel, an almost two-minute video is often presented. Although the voiceover is in French, the video is accompanied by English subtitles and also contains screenshots of several English-language articles. At the same time, the sources of reports about the death of Macron’s alleged lover are not French, but African media. For example, at the beginning of the entry, material from a South African English-language website published on March 31 is shown Mzansi Extreme (according to the timestamp, it came out just 58 minutes before the video was made). From then until the publication of this analysis, no other notes appeared on the site.

Next in the video is shown the one released on March 29 and already remote a note from the Senegalese news portal Sene.News (also referred to by Mzansi Extreme). "Verified" found archived copy pages with that article. In the original it is written in French, but for some reason in the French-language video it is shown translated into English. We also found several Cameroonian French-language sites with the same news: Actu Cameroun (note published on March 30), 237actu And 237online (the last two also referred to Sene.News).

It is noteworthy that two websites identify themselves as the authors of the interview with Fleming: Sene.News and Actu Cameroun. Moreover, both articles contain the same almost four-minute video, published March 28 on YouTube channel Parlons SIDA! (“Let's talk about AIDS!” - French). In less than three weeks, the interview received only 1,600 views and not a single comment.

Parlons SIDA channel! was registered on July 13, 2023, but all seven videos about the fight against AIDS published there appeared on March 27–28, 2025. Moreover, “Verified” found that six videos (with the exception of the interview with Fleming) were taken from other sources. For example, first the interview was posted four years ago on the channel Solidarité Sida, second — 14 years ago on VOA Africa, third — eight years ago on Editions L'Harmattan, fourth — 13 years ago on mingha africa onlus, fifth — nine years ago on CNLS Senegal, sixth — 12 years ago on Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

The reason why someone chose to interview Fleming in particular is not very clear. Although in the viral video and on Solovyov’s Telegram channel he is called a well-known activist who is fighting the spread of AIDS in Africa, Verified was unable to find any evidence of his alleged merits. At the same time, the interviewee, speaking about a disease about which he is supposedly very concerned, makes a common mistake among ordinary people - confuses HIV and AIDS. Below is a full translation of the conversation:

- Hello. Thank you for agreeing to speak on the AIDS epidemic on the African continent and beyond. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
— Hello, my name is Raoul Fleming. I was born in the Antilles on island of Saint Martin. Last year I visited African countries including Senegal, Benin and Ivory Coast to help local hospitals and AIDS organizations.
— What exactly is your activity in Africa?
— I do a lot of things, it depends on the needs of a particular organization or hospital. Sometimes I have to be a courier and deliver packages from point A to point B, sometimes I am assigned local tasks: for example, printing brochures, organizing a fundraiser or doing something else, etc.
— What associations do you work with?
— I collaborated with such associations as CNLS, RNP+, UNAIDS (National Council to Combat AIDS in Senegal, National Network of Associations of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Senegal, and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, respectively. - Ed.), etc.
— Why did you decide to become an activist against AIDS?
— First of all, AIDS remains a serious public health problem on the African continent. By statistics, [human immunodeficiency virus] has infected more than 25 million people. A significant number of Africans are infected, but there are not enough drugs, supplies and tools to prevent AIDS. Then this disease affected my family.
— Do you have relatives who have become infected with this virus?
- Yes, a year ago I lost my brother. He died of AIDS. This tragic event motivated me to become involved in the fight against AIDS. We were very close to him.
- My sincere condolences. How did he get infected?
“He led a rather active sex life, and his sexual partners were mostly men. He even had sex with Emmanuel Macron after his visit to Saint Martin in 2018.
— With French President Emmanuel Macron?
- Right. We even took a photo with him. My brother dated him for a while immediately after this meeting, he went to visit him in France, but he chose to keep the details of their relationship confidential.
— When did your brother find out that he had AIDS?
- Shortly before death. He did not know that his poor health was due to this infection. When he discovered this, his condition was already too serious. This is why we must educate people about AIDS prevention methods. In Europe people are no longer dying from AIDS, but in Africa and other former colonies there is very little information and treatment is very difficult to obtain due to lack of funding. We must do everything we can to change the situation.
— Once again I express my condolences to you. However, what priority measures need to be implemented to combat the AIDS epidemic on the African continent?
— First of all, of course, this is a question of financing and dissemination of information. AIDS is a disease you can live with today. It is enough to provide the infected with medicines, but this requires money, which is sorely lacking. People also need to be informed about the risks of infection, the need for contraception and how to recognize symptoms early in the disease.
— Thank you for your time and for the work you have done.

In 2018, Macron actually visited French island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean Sea. That visit, made a year after the devastating hurricane "Irma", called scandal: while photographing a politician with local residents, one of them showed his middle finger to the camera. French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen called The man's behavior is "unforgivable." Macron defended the photo, saying: "I love all the children of the [French] Republic, whatever their misdeeds."

Then the press reportedthat the man in the T-shirt in the photo is a former criminal who had recently been released from prison, where he served time for robbery. In a personal conversation, Macron asked him to think about his mother, “stop fooling around” and not make any more mistakes. Later the newspaper Le Parisien found outthat the 22-year-old man's name is Reolf (Raoul) Fleming, and the obscene gesture was demonstrated by his cousin, 19-year-old Dimitri. “I know it’s not good to show the middle finger,” said the eldest brother. “But it wasn’t against the president at all.” At the time, [the brother] was just doing it for style. He showed this to those who don’t want everything to be good in our lives... Those who don’t like to see us with the president.” According to Reolf, his cousin most likely regrets making the scandalous gesture. “The President is like an older brother to us. We love him very much, he is a good person,” Fleming added.

Shortly after meeting with Macron, the man was convicted again, this time for drug possession and resisting police. In the same month, the newspaper Le Parisien reportedthat Fleming was sentenced to eight months in prison, four of which were suspended. Although, as can be seen, the French media have been quite actively following the fate of the brothers for some time, not a single major publication has reported a sexual relationship between one of them and the president of the country.

There is no evidence that it was Reolf Fleming who gave the interview about the death of his brother from AIDS. It could be either just a similar person or an actor whose appearance was corrected using neural networks. However, "Verified" can neither confirm nor deny the use of artificial intelligence in creating the video - we tested it in several AI detectors and received conflicting results.

At the same time, it is safe to say that the person in the video (whoever he was) lied about Dimitri’s death. “Verified” found Fleming’s brother’s Instagram page, where he posted a photo with Macron in 2018. “Even the President...feels safe around us...” that post said. Now account @_nba.didi private, that is, only subscribers can see its publications. After two requests for subscription approval, the account owner blocked the Verified author. However page Dimitri's Threads is public, and there are a couple of posts from 2025 with photos, removed in the USA. For example, in publications dated February 1, he was captured in Times Square in New York. In addition, on April 16, the Saint-Martin singer Tamil came out clipwhere is Dimitri performed the role of her lover. At the same time, the man did not write anything about HIV/AIDS in his public posts.

In the story of Dimitri's false death, there are other indirect signs of falsification. “Verified” has already repeatedly talked about very similar fakes, which were based on interviews with black people, allegedly revealing the secrets of Western politicians. For example, in anticipation of the US presidential elections in the fall of 2024 got infected fabricated reports that Democratic candidate Kamala Harris shot and killed a rare rhinoceros during a visit to Zambia. A person who was introduced as an employee of a Zambian national park, but in fact did not work there, spoke about this in an interview with an unnamed publication, as if by chance. As in the case of the “Fleming” revelations, the day before the video appeared on a suspicious YouTube channel, and then a Zimbabwean website reported on it. In a similar way, fake news was spread according to which Harris shot down teenager and fled the scene of the accident, and German Foreign Minister Annalena Bärbock enjoyed it in Africa escort services. In one case managed to prove, that an actress living in St. Petersburg starred in the interview: she played the role of an employee of the New York Cartier boutique, where the first lady of Ukraine Elena Zelenskaya allegedly spent more than $1 million.

“Verified” turned to the editors of the websites Sene.News and Actu Cameroun with a request to explain how they prepared their publications. In addition, we wrote to the press service of the CNLS organization to find out whether Reolf Fleming really collaborated with them. By the time of publication of this analysis, we had not received any responses.

So whoever the man in the viral video is, he is definitely lying about the death of Reolf Fleming's cousin from AIDS. At the very least, this casts doubt on the authenticity of the rest of the story about his sexual affair with the French President. In addition, indirect signs indicate that the video was another production aimed at discrediting a Western politician.

Cover photo: social networks

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

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2. Is it true that Kamala Harris shot and killed a rare rhinoceros during a visit to Zambia in 2023?
3. Is it true that HIV can be transmitted through mosquito bites?