France's President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron disembark at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi. Photo / AFP
France's President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron disembark at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi. Photo / AFP
Emmanuel Macron has been filmed being shoved in the face by his wife Brigitte after the couple had landed in Vietnam.
The footage, shot by the Associated Press news agency in Hanoi on Sunday evening, showed the French President standing alone as the plane’s door opened.
Suddenly, the arms ofhis wife, who was off-camera, could be seen through the doorway emerging from the left before she pushed him strongly in the face with both hands.
Macron appeared taken aback but swiftly regained his composure and turned to wave through the open door.
Moments later, the couple walked down the plane’s staircase for an official welcome by Vietnamese officials, although Brigitte Macron, dressed in red, did not take her husband’s offered arm.
Footage of the incident, along with photographs of Macron appearing to look angry in the aftermath, quickly spread on social media sites.
France's President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron disembark from the plane upon their arrival at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi. Photo / AFP
The Elysée Palace initially denied the authenticity of the images, claiming they were AI-generated by accounts hostile to the centrist French head of state, before finally conceding that they were genuine.
‘Pro-Russian accounts to blame’
A close associate of Macron later described the incident as a couple’s harmless “squabble”.
Meanwhile, another member of the president’s entourage downplayed its significance, insisting it was a “moment of togetherness”.
The source told reporters: “It was a moment when the President and his wife were decompressing one last time after a 16-hour journey before the start of the trip by joking around. It’s a moment of togetherness. No more was needed to feed the mills of the conspiracy theorists.”
The source blamed pro-Russian accounts for negative comments about the incident and said: “There was obviously no violent gesture between Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron. To say the opposite – based on a very partial, fleeting image, without sound and without context – is dishonest and shows a serious lack of understanding of them.”
The French President strenuously denied any “domestic dispute” and complained that this was the latest attempt by “crazy people”, “fools”, and opponents out to smear him at all costs.
“We are horsing around and, really, joking with my wife, and I am surprised by this,” he told reporters in Hanoi.
He also lamented the fact that the footage had been turned into “a kind of global catastrophe where some people are even coming up with theories”.
Macron said other recent videos had been similarly misinterpreted in an attempt to ridicule him, adding: “For three weeks... there have been people who have watched videos and think that I shared a bag of cocaine, that I had a one-on-one with a Turkish President and that now I’m having a domestic dispute with my wife.
“None of this is true. However, these three videos are real, so everyone needs to calm down and focus on the real news.”
Earlier this month, the Elysée had to deny false claims that Macron had brought cocaine onto a train headed to Kyiv for a meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s European allies.
A video showed the French President hiding a white object as he sat alongside Sir Keir Starmer and Friedrich Merz, the German Chancellor. The clip was shared widely by Kremlin-backed social media channels.
“This is a tissue. For blowing your nose,” the Elysée posted alongside a high-definition image of the crumpled object. Next to it, the Palace posted a picture of the three leaders with the caption: “This is European unity. To build peace.”
Jean-Noel Barrot, the French foreign minister, accused Russia of “propagating blatant hoaxes”, saying: “This is irresponsible – and lame.”
Last week, much ink was spilt over why Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, held onto Macron’s finger for 13 seconds during a European Political Community meeting in Albania.
On Monday, Macron attributed these manipulations to “networks that are fairly well established”, pointing the finger at “the Russians” and “extremists in France”.
“Then we have lots of accounts, anonymous or not, [who] have let success go to their heads,” he said, adding that this included “news commentators who have never liked what I’ve been doing, who explained this morning that I was conducting battered man diplomacy, just to show you how crazy they are”.
Back in France, Jean-Philippe Tanguy, an MP from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, dismissed such suggestions as “lies worthy of a banana republic”.
“At the slightest sign of trouble, Macron’s camp blames artificial intelligence and Russian intelligence services before justifying the unjustifiable,” he wrote on X.
Vietnam is the first stop on an almost week-long tour of Southeast Asia by the French President. During the trip, it is expected he will pitch France as a “third way” between the US and China in the region. He will also visit Indonesia and Singapore.
Vietnam is facing significant levies on exports to the US, while it is also embroiled in disputes with China, another important trade partner, over territories in the South China Sea.
An aide to Macron said his “Indo-Pacific strategy” had gained new relevance because of Donald Trump’s trade war. He said the French president was “defending the idea of international trade rules – we don’t want a jungle where the law of the strongest prevails”.
Meanwhile, Vietnam has adopted a “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility and attempting to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers.
