Featured Image Credit: LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images
Topics: World News, Politics
Jess Hardiman
French President Emmanuel Macron has broken his silence on a shocking viral video that appeared to show wife Brigitte ‘slapping’ him before they stepped off a plane.
The couple landed in Hanoi, Vietnam, yesterday to begin their tour of South-East Asia, with further stops also including Indonesia and Singapore.
Their trip marks not only Macron’s first formal trip to Vietnam, but also the first visit from a French president in nearly a decade.
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However, this ended up being overshadowed somewhat by a blink-and-you-miss-it moment that happened before the president even stepped off the plane.
Footage from the Associated Press showed Macron standing by the plane's exit as workers opened the door.
As they readied the doorway and staircase for the couple’s exit, an arm suddenly came into view and appeared to ‘slap’ Macron’s face.
Seconds later, his wife walked out behind him, dressed in a red blazer, before the pair descended the stairs onto the runway.
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"Okay, but did you guys SEE @EmmanuelMacron's wife literally push his face like she was swatting a fly?" one person wrote on Twitter as they shared the footage.
"Like she thought she was invisible or something and Macron just laughed it off, shaking hands like, ‘No big deal, just got publicly slapped by my wife, move along'."
Another said: "A hand emerges from a red jacket and slaps the president. This isn’t a comedy sketch - it’s Macron and Brigitte’s official arrival in Vietnam."
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A third noted how Macron had looked 'momentarily stunned' before ' smoothing it over with a wave'.
The supposed scuffle may have inevitably sent the internet into overdrive, but Macron has since claimed the exchange may not have been what it seemed.
He later told reporters that they had simply been joking around, with France24 reporting he said: “We are horsing around and, really, joking with my wife.”
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Macron added that the incident had been massively overblown, saying: “It becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.”
His office had also previously offered an explanation, echoing that the couple – who have been married since 2007 – were just mucking about.
“It was a moment where the president and his wife were decompressing one last time before the start of the trip by horsing around,” a statement said.
“It’s a moment of complicity. It was all that was needed to give ammunition to the conspiracy theorists.”