French leader's office downplays "moment of togetherness" with wife
Hanoi, Vietnam — French President Emmanuel Macron's office on Monday downplayed an incident in which his wife appeared to push his face away as he arrived in Vietnam to begin a Southeast Asian tour.
Video shot by The Associated Press in Hanoi on Sunday evening shows Macron's plane door opening, revealing him. His wife Brigitte's arms then emerge from the left of the open doorway, she places both hands on her husband's face and gives it a shove. The president appears startled but quickly recovers and turns to wave through the open door. She remains concealed by the aircraft body, making it impossible to see her facial expression or body language.
They proceed down the staircase for the official welcome by Vietnamese officials, though Brigitte Macron does not take her husband's offered arm.
The video clip circulated rapidly online, promoted particularly by accounts that are habitually hostile to the French leader. Macron's office initially denied the authenticity of the images, before they were confirmed as genuine.
Later, Macron told reporters that he and his wife had just been joking around.
"We are horsing around and, really, joking with my wife," he said, calling reports on the incident overblown: "It becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe."
A close associate of the president earlier described the incident as a couple's harmless "squabble."
Another member of his entourage also 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, including AFP's. "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 Macrons got married in 2007, but they met when the president was still in high school, and she was a teacher. Vietnam is the first stop on an almost week-long tour of Southeast Asia for Macron, where he will pitch France as a reliable alternative to the United States and China amid economic uncertainty fueled by the two global giants' ongoing trade tariff war.
He will also visit Indonesia and Singapore.
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