Featured Image Credit: Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images
Topics: Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, Politics, Social Media
Ben Williams
Topics: Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, Politics, Social Media
Donald Trump has once again found a way to turn an already viral political moment and kick it up a gear, this time by reviving the intense attention around Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte.
The US president commented during a private lunch on 1 April, while discussing France, NATO allies, and the war against Iran, and the remark quickly spread on social media as clips and posts began circulating.
For many people, it immediately brought back memories of the footage that sent Macron and Brigitte hurtling into headlines last year, after a brief exchange between the couple as they arrived in Vietnam, leading to her allegedly slapping the French president’s face. It did not take long for that big 2025 moment to snowball either.
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During the lunch, as shared on X (formely Twitter), Trump commented: “I call up France, Macron – whose wife treats him extremely badly. Still recovering from the right to the jaw.”
As noted by The Straits Times, the US president added: “Emmanuel, we’d love to have some help in the Gulf even though we’re setting records on knocking out bad people and knocking out ballistic missiles. We’d love to have some help. If you could, could you please send ships immediately.”
Trump then even went on to mimic the French President when recalling his apparent response: “No no no, we cannot do that, Donald. We can do that after the war is won”.
Trump said his own alleged response and delivered his new take on NATO: “‘No no, I don’t need after the war is won Emmanuel’...So I learned about NATO – NATO won’t be there if we ever have the big one, you know what I mean by the big one,” also branding North Atlantic Treaty Organization a ‘paper tiger’.
At the time of the reporting around the alleged slap, however, Macron publicly rejected the idea that the moment was anything more serious than joking between the pair. Speaking to reporters in Hanoi, he said: “My wife and I were squabbling, we were rather joking, and I was taken by surprise.”
He later doubled down on that explanation, adding: “We are horsing around and, really, joking with my wife.” His office also dismissed the frenzy, saying: “It was a moment where the president and his wife were decompressing one last time before the start of the trip by horsing around.” The statement continued: “It’s a moment of complicity. It was all that was needed to give ammunition to the conspiracy theorists.”