Emmanuel Macron put on a brave face this morning as he stepped out with his wife Brigitte for the final day of a state visit to Vietnam that has been overshadowed by what appeared to be a marital dispute caught on camera
The French president last night sought to calm the furore triggered by a televised squabble with the First Lady by claiming they were just ‘playfighting’, while blaming disinformation campaigns for taking the video out of context.
The footage in question showed Brigitte Macron giving her husband a two-handed shove in the face moments before they stepped off their presidential jet to be greeted by delegates in Hanoi on Sunday evening.
Today the couple were seen arm in arm as the president arrived at Hanoi University of Science and Technology to deliver a speech – a visit that came hours after Mr Macron said ‘crackpot’ conspiracy theorists were working to intensify speculation around the state of his marriage.
They were later clasping one another’s hands as they boarded their plane to depart Vietnam this afternoon before turning to wave goodbye to their hosts with beaming smiles.
In comments to reporters, Macron pointed out that he had recently been falsely accused of doing cocaine with fellow European leaders Sir Keir Starmer and Germany’s Friedrich Merz, and of having a physical altercation with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
But the rumour mill was sent into overdrive by Mr Macron’s office which first issued a statement claiming the video was an AI-generated fake, only to climb down hours later and admit the clip was genuine.
‘My wife and I were squabbling, we were rather joking, and I was taken by surprise,’ Mr Macron told reporters in Vietnam last night.
Now it has ‘become a kind of planetary catastrophe, and some are even coming up with theories.
‘For three weeks, there have been people who have watched videos and who think that I shared a bag of cocaine, that I had a mano-a-mano with a Turkish president and now that I am having a domestic dispute with my wife.
‘In these three videos, I took a tissue, shook someone’s hand and just joked with my wife, as we do quite often. Nothing more.
‘None of this is true… so everyone needs to calm down.’
The latest object of speculation was generated by the French First Lady on Sunday, moments after the French presidential jet touched down in Vietnam.
Shocking video of the incident shot by the Associated Press news agency in Hanoi showed the French President standing on his plane in an open doorway before making his way down the stairs.
He appeared to be in conversation with someone in the cabin who was obscured from view. That person was quickly revealed to be Brigitte Macron, who planted her hands on her husband’s face and shoved him.
The president was startled but quickly realised he was in full view of TV cameras and turned to wave through the open plane door.
The couple then proceeded down the staircase for the official welcome by Vietnamese officials, though Mrs Macron did not take her husband’s offered arm.
Macron’s office initially denied the authenticity of the images, suggesting they had been AI-generated – but later pulled a U-turn and admitted they were genuine.
A close associate of the president later described the incident as a couple’s harmless ‘squabble’.
An Elysee official played down the moment, denying it showed an argument between the couple, who have been married since 2007: ‘It was a moment when the president and his wife were relaxing one last time before the start of the trip by having a laugh.’
‘It was a moment of closeness,’ the official said.
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 relationship between Macron, 47, and his 72-year-old wife has long been a subject of fascination at home and abroad.
She was a drama teacher and he a pupil when they met at a private school in their hometown of Amiens in northeast France. A mother of three children, Brigitte divorced her husband and began a relationship with Macron while he was in his late teens.
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Suffering and smiling