Trump reacts to Emmanuel Macron, wife slap video; says couple was ‘just joking'
US President Donald Trump reacted to the viral clip involving French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte, which sparked widespread speculation online, while addressing the media from the Oval Office on Friday.The clip, filmed as the couple arrived in Vietnam, shows Brigitte playfully pushing Macron in the face as they disembark a plane.Asked about the moment during an Oval Office press event with Elon Musk, Trump said he had spoken to Macron and reassured reporters that 'they're fine.'advertisement
'They're two really good people I know very well, and I don't know what that was all about,' Trump remarked.In a lighthearted response to a question on 'world leader to world leader marital advice,' Trump quipped, 'Make sure the door remains closed,' prompting laughter in the room. The video, which quickly went viral, initially prompted denial from the lyse Palace, calling the footage fake. However, they later confirmed its authenticity and clarified the interaction was a private moment of levity.Macron echoed this, telling reporters: 'We are horsing around and, really, joking with my wife. It becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.'The French President and his wife met when Macron was a student and Brigitte was his teacher. The incident was further described as 'a moment of complicity' that was unfortunately seized upon by conspiracy theorists online.advertisementMacron's office earlier offered a similar explanation."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.
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