Emmanuel Macron’s office has admitted that his wife Brigitte hit him during a row, after footage showed the First Lady appearing to push his face away as their plane touched down in Vietnam.
Shocking video of the incident, shot by the Associated Press news agency in Hanoi on Sunday evening, shows the French President’s plane door opening to reveal him.
His wife Brigitte’s arms then emerge from the left of the open doorway as she places both hands on her husband’s face and gives it a shove.
The president appears startled but quickly recovers and turns to wave through the open door.
She remains concealed by the aircraft body, making it impossible to see her facial expression or body language.
The couple then proceed down the staircase for the official welcome by Vietnamese officials, though Brigitte Macron does not take her husband’s offered arm.
Macron’s office initially denied the authenticity of the images, before they were confirmed as genuine.
A close associate of the president later described the incident as a couple’s harmless ‘squabble’.
Footage shot by the Associated Press news agency in Hanoi on Sunday evening shows Macron’s plane door opening to reveal him
His wife Brigitte’s arms emerge from the left of the open doorway, she places both hands on her husband’s face and gives it a shove
The president appears startled but quickly recovers and turns to wave through the open door
The couple then proceed down the staircase for the official welcome by Vietnamese officials, though Brigitte Macron does not take her husband’s offered arm
An Elysee official played down the moment, denying it showed an argument between the couple, who have been married since 2007: ‘It was a moment when the president and his wife were relaxing one last time before the start of the trip by having a laugh.’
‘It was a moment of closeness,’ the official said.
Another member of his entourage played down the significance of the incident.
‘It was a moment when the president and his wife were decompressing one last time before the start of the trip by joking around,’ the second source told reporters.
‘It’s a moment of togetherness. No more was needed to feed the mills of the conspiracy theorists,’ the source added, blaming pro-Russian accounts for negative comments about the incident.
The video clip circulated rapidly online, promoted particularly by accounts that are habitually hostile to the French leader.
Macron’s visit to Vietnam, the first by a French president in almost a decade, comes as he aims to boost France’s influence in its former colony.
Vietnam, which has a heavily export-driven economy, has made concessions to the US in trade talks in a bid to avoid 46% tariffs.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron, his wife Brigitte Macron (C-L), Vietnam’s General Secretary of the Communist Party To Lam and his wife Ngo Phuong Ly (C-R) visit the Temple of Literature in Hanoi on May 26
Vietnam is the first stop on an almost week-long tour of Southeast Asia for Macron where he will pitch France as a reliable alternative to the United States and China
But Brussels has concerns that Vietnam’s efforts to buy more American goods could come at Europe’s expense.
US President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to impose 50% tariffs on imports from the European Union, but softened his stance two days later, restoring a July 9 deadline for talks between Washington and Brussels.
Vietnam is the first stop on an almost week-long tour of Southeast Asia for Macron where he will pitch France as a reliable alternative to the United States and China.
He will also visit Indonesia and Singapore.
Speaking on the first day of the tour today, Macron called for the preservation of a world order ‘based on law’.
During a press statement alongside his Vietnamese counterpart Luong Cuong in Hanoi, Macron said a rules-based order was necessary at ‘a time of both great imbalance and a return to power-driven rhetoric’.
Earlier this month, France furiously denied a fake claim that President Macron hid a bag of cocaine while posing for a photograph with Keir Starmer and Germany‘s Friedrich Merz.
The trio met on Friday aboard a train travelling from Poland to Ukraine to visit President Volodymyr Zelensky and to pressure Russia into agreeing to a ceasefire.
Pro-Russian keyboard warriors were quick to fuel wild conspiracy theories that a white object on the table was drugs, but the French government quickly clarified that the item in question was in fact a tissue.
