Macron downplays video showing wife pushing his face away

Paris: They were just play-fighting.

That was French President Emmanuel Macron’s explanation for video images that showed his wife, Brigitte, pushing her husband away with both hands on his face before they disembarked from their plane to start a tour of South-East Asia.

The moment quickly made headlines in France, with media trying to decipher the interaction that cameras spotted through the just-opened door of the plane. The headline of a story on the website of the daily Le Parisien newspaper asked: “Slap or ‘squabble’? The images of Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron disembarking in Vietnam trigger a lot of comments.”

Macron later told reporters that the couple, married since 2007 after meeting at the high school where he was a student and she was a teacher, were simply joking around.

“We are squabbling and, rather, joking with my wife,” he said, adding that the incident was being overblown into “a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe”.

In a video taken by the Associated Press as the Macrons arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday, a uniformed man can be seen pulling open the plane door and revealing the president standing inside, dressed in a suit and talking to someone who wasn’t visible.

In this grab taken from video, France’s President Emmanuel Macron’s wife appears to push his face away as they prepare to disembark a plane.Credit: AP

Brigitte Macron’s arms – in red – were seen reaching out and pushing Macron away, with one hand covering his mouth and part of his nose while the other was on his jaw. The French leader recoiled, turning his head away. Then, apparently realising that he was on camera, broke into a smile and gave a little wave.

In subsequent images, Macron and his wife, wearing a red jacket, appeared at the top of the stairs. He offered an arm, but she didn’t take it. They walked down the carpeted stairs side by side.

The French leader argued that the images and reaction to them offered a cautionary tale about disinformation in the social media age, noting that in recent weeks, other videos had been used to circulate made-up stories about him.

“Everyone needs to calm down,” he said.

His office also downplayed the interaction.

“It was a moment where the president and his wife were decompressing one last time before the start of the trip by horsing around. It’s a moment of complicity. It was all that was needed to give ammunition to the conspiracy theorists,” his office said.

Brigitte Macron was Brigitte Auzière, a married mother of three children, when they met at his high school. A teacher, she supervised the drama club where Emmanuel Macron, a literature lover, was a member.

He moved to Paris for his last year of high school, but promised to marry Brigitte. She later moved to the French capital to join him and divorced before they finally married.

Vietnam visit

Macron said on Monday that France had so far signed €9 billion ($15.8 billion) worth of contracts in Vietnam during the first leg of his South-East Asia trip.

The first formal visit to Vietnam by a French president in nearly a decade follows US President Donald Trump’s threats last week to impose 50% duties on European Union goods from June 1, fuelling tensions with the 27-country bloc, though he later delayed that deadline to July 9.

Export-dependent Vietnam, under pressure from Washington to buy more American goods, has made pledges in trade talks to try to avert 46% tariffs that could impair its growth, fanning European concerns about deals at the region’s expense.

Deals signed during Macron’s visit covered Vietnam’s purchase of 20 Airbus aircraft, co-operation on nuclear energy, defence, railways, earth-observation satellites and Sanofi vaccines, Reuters reported.

In statements to the press, Macron reiterated France’s support of freedom of navigation, an issue dear to Vietnam as it often clashes with Beijing over contested boundaries in the South China Sea.

France ruled the South-East Asian country for about 70 years until it was forced out in 1954 after a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu in northern Vietnam. Ties have improved in recent decades, being upgraded last year to Vietnam’s highest level.

AP / Reuters

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