Watch: Macron ‘slapped by wife Brigitte' on Vietnam state visit
A brisk gesture by Brigitte Macron towards the face of her husband has set off claims of strife between the French presidential couple, which officials promptly dismissed as online mischief-making.
The supposed slapping of President Macron, which was captured in news footage of the leader's arrival for a state visit to Vietnam, prompted a social media flurry. It was quickly circulated by RT and other Kremlin-controlled news sites that France has accused of waging hostile propaganda against the president.
The video, from the AP news agency, starts as the door of the presidential plane opens at Hanoi airport on Sunday. Mrs Macron's hand, identifiable by her red jacket, is seen pushing or striking her husband's face. He appears startled. The couple walk down the steps for the official welcome and Mrs Macron appears to ignore her husband's offer of his arm as they descend.
Macron dismissed the fuss over the video as 'a lot of nonsense', saying: 'My wife and I were horsing around, having a joke, and I was surprised by that and that becomes a sort of geopolitical disaster.
'It's nonsense. People read all kinds of stupidity into things,' he said, and compared the interpretation to a claim made this month that a video showed that he and the leaders of the UK and Germany had snorted cocaine.
French officials initially rejected the video as probable 'fake news'. When it was verified, presidential aides said Mrs Macron's half-glimpsed gesture was part of the normal chamaillerie, meaning playful horsing around. 'It was a moment when the president and his wife were unwinding one last time before the start of the trip by having a laugh,' an aide said. 'It was a moment of complicity. That was all it took to give conspiracy theorists more fodder.'
Another member of the presidential party told media: 'There was obviously absolutely no violent gesture … to say otherwise based on a very partial, out-of-context image is dishonest and shows little knowledge of the couple.'
The Élysée was nevertheless on the defensive after an initial error in attributing the video to a malicious use of artificial intelligence, commentators said.
The denials did nothing to quell mockery and critical commentary on social media. 'Mrs Macron has done what all of France wants to do,' said one milder post. Many posts played up caricatures of the 25-year age gap between the 47-year-old president and the 72-year-old première dame, who was a teacher at his school.
Since 2017, the French government has accused the Russian media and intelligence services of targeting Macron and his wife in a drive to destabilise France.
It has named a unit of the GRU military intelligence service as the source of the 'cyberoffensive' against the couple. This month, France accused Russian agents of targeting Mrs Macron after a video, generated by artificial intelligence, appears to show a former pupil accusing her of sexually assaulting him when he was 12. Moscow has denied any involvement.
Also this month, Paris accused Moscow of circulating a false claim that Macron had sniffed cocaine along with Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, while on a train to Ukraine with Sir Keir Starmer.
The French language service of RT, the Kremlin's international news outlet, headlined its latest story: 'A slap in Vietnam? The controversy surrounding Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron is causing a stir.'
It said: 'This controversy is illustrating once again the difficulty that the Élysée Palace has with controlling the image of the president in the age of social media.'
Macron's visit to Vietnam, a former French colony, is his first since taking office in 2017. It is part of a southeast Asia tour that will also include visits to Indonesia and Singapore.
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