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
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.
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’.
