French President denies being slapped by wife on plane
French President Emmanuel Macron has denied having a domestic dispute with his wife Brigitte after a video appeared to show her shoving his face away when they touched down for a visit to Vietnam.
Unbelievable video taken by The Associated Press showed the presidential plane door open to Ms Macron’s hands on her husband’s face as they arrived at Hanoi Airport for the start of a tour of Southeast Asia.
In the footage, the plane’s doors opened to reveal Mr Macron stood inside the aircraft, facing his wife with a stern look. Within seconds, Ms Macron’s arms pop into view, with both of them raised to Mr Macron’s face in what appears to be a small blow and shove.
Appearing shocked, the French leader immediately noticed the doors open and quickly turned to wave at the sea of cameras at the bottom of the plane steps.
The couple – who have been married since 2007 – then disembarked together from the aircraft and walked down the staircase, with Mr Macron extending his arm to his wife, which she refused.
The clip of the fighting couple swiftly made headlines in France, with the Palais de l’Élysée initially rejecting it as probable “fake news”.
But Mr Macron himself later revealed the video was genuine, claiming the scene had been taken out of context and dismissing any speculation as “a lot of nonsense”.
“There’s a video showing me joking and teasing my wife and somehow that becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe, with people even coming up with theories to explain it,” Mr Macron said.
“We are horsing around, having a joke, and I was surprised by that and that becomes a sort of geopolitical disasters.
“It’s nonsense. People read all kinds of stupidity into things.”
The President’s office later echoed his suggestion, claiming the pair were “decompressing one last time” before their trip.
“It’s a moment of complicity. It was all that was needed to give ammunition to the conspiracy theorists,” his office said.
The same source added that “it was a moment of complicity” that “wasn’t enough to give the conspiracy theorists more to chew” – alluding to the negative media spread by Russia.
The politician was just 15 when he started a relationship with the then mother-of-three, who was his French literature teacher.
This is the third time this month that the French leader has been the subject of viral video footage at a time when France says it is being targeted by repeated disinformation campaigns as Russia steps up attacks on Ukraine.
It was falsely claimed Mr Macron took cocaine on a trip to Kyiv alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and images also emerged purporting to show Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dominate the French leader in a handshake.
On Tuesday, Mr Macron testily referred to the other incidents, including the images shot on the train to Kyiv where some accounts falsely claimed he shared the illicit drug. But the object he removed from the table when the media entered was a tissue.
Mr Erdogan, meanwhile, was filmed holding the President’s finger at a summit. (News.com.au)
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