French President Emmanuel Macron has downplayed an incident showing what appears to be him being pushed in the face by his wife.
Clips that have gone viral on social media show France’s first lady Brigitte Macron shoving her hands onto the mouth of her husband after touching down in Vietnam for a diplomatic tour of Southeast Asia.
The president then notices the plane’s open door, and dutifully smiles and waves for the cameras. As the pair walk down the steps from their plane at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, Macron also seemed to offer the first lady his arm, which she didn’t take.
The incident sparked a flurry of debate over whether there are problems between the couple, who have been married since 2007.
However, Macron was quick to offer an explanation, insisting to reporters in Hanoi that he and his wife were just “horsing around,” the Associated Press reported. The French president added that the incident was being blown out of proportion to drum-up “a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.”
“Everyone needs to calm down,” Macron added.
Macron’s office also issued a statement downplaying the incident, saying the pair were “decompressing one last time before the start of the trip by horsing around” and that this was “all that was needed to give ammunition to the conspiracy theorists.”
This is not the first time that French president’s team have rushed to downplay rumors which have spread online.
On May 11, the Élysée Palace, the official residence of the French leader, issued a formal statement on X to dismiss a conspiracy theory that Macron was taking cocaine while meeting with fellow world leaders.
The claims were spread by video showing what conspiracy theorists believed Macron trying to discreetly remove a bag of white powder from view while traveling on a night train to Ukraine along with Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
However, what Macron was actually quickly taking off the table was a screwed up white tissue paper.
“When European unity becomes inconvenient, disinformation goes so far as to make a simple tissue look like drugs,” the Élysée account posted. “This fake news is being spread by France’s enemies, both abroad and at home. We must remain vigilant against manipulation.”
For years, France’s first lady has also been the victim of malicious false claims pushed by the far-right and MAGA that she is a transgender woman and was born a man.
The French president and his wife’s relationship has long caused intrigue and controversy due to them first meeting when he was 15 years old and she was his married 39-year-old drama teacher.
