Latest news with #Hanoi
Russia Today
10 hours ago
- General
- Russia Today
Kremlin speaks out on Macron slap
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was reluctant to comment on French President Emmanuel Macron being pushed in the face by his spouse Brigitte, saying it was unacceptable to talk about such family issues. However, he went on to point out that a wife always has a reason to slap her husband. The footage of the incident was captured as the French first couple arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, on May 25. The video shows the aircraft door opening to reveal Macron speaking to someone off-camera. Moments later, two arms in red sleeves reach out and push his face, covering his mouth and jaw. Macron steps back, smiles, and waves after noticing the cameras. Brigitte soon appears beside him, wearing a red jacket. The video later went viral, prompting the president to downplay the incident, describing it as the two of them just 'bickering and joking.' 'You know, I am convinced that it would be inappropriate for us to comment on the Macron family's private matters,' Peskov said. 'On the other hand, if a wife slaps her husband, she never does it without a reason, but still, it's not our business.' Shifting away from celebrity gossip, the spokesman emphasized that Paris isn't working towards peace, and opting to increase pressure on Moscow instead. 'France still believes that something can be achieved with Russia through pressure — this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of our country,' Peskov said, adding that the fact that the French leader 'does not understand the reality of the situation' is regrettable. France has provided over €3.8 billion ($4.2 billion) in military aid to Kiev since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, according to the Kiel Institute. Authorities in Paris have advocated deploying French troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal between Kiev and Moscow, arguing that it could help deter Russia. In March, Macron announced a French-British plan to prepare such a 'reassurance force' in the event of a ceasefire. The announcement sparked protests in Paris against what demonstrators called NATO's militaristic stance. Russia has repeatedly warned it won't accept the presence of any NATO country's troops in Ukraine, and pointed out that the military bloc's expansion in Europe had been a primary reason for the conflict.
Khaleej Times
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
Trump says Macrons 'are fine' after plane row video
US President Donald Trump said Friday that Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte were "fine," after a viral video appeared to show her shoving the French president's face on a trip to Vietnam. "Make sure the door remains closed," the three-times married Trump quipped to reporters when asked if he had any "world leader to world leader marital advice" for Macron about the video. "That was not good," added Trump, who was holding a joint press conference with billionaire Elon Musk in the Oval Office. The incident was filmed just as the door of the French presidential plane swung open after landing in Hanoi on Sunday. It showed Brigitte Macron, 72, apparently shoving her husband's face. Macron, 47, appeared startled but quickly recovered and turns to wave through the open door. The 78-year-old US president, who has long had a "bromance" with his French counterpart, said he had been in touch with him since. "I spoke to him. He's fine. They're fine. They're two really good people. I know them very well," added Trump. "I don't know what that was all about." Macron himself denied on Monday that the couple had been having a domestic dispute. He blamed disinformation campaigns for trying to put false meaning on the footage. Musk, who was marking his departure from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, meanwhile took the chance to joke at Macron's expense. Asked about a black eye he was sporting, the tycoon replied "I wasn't anywhere near France" to the apparent puzzlement of a reporter who asked him to explain the comment. Musk then said it was his son who caused the injury with a punch.
Irish Times
19 hours ago
- General
- Irish Times
The Macron shove is not a sign of a very French love story, but something more disturbing
The moment last Monday evening when aeroplane doors opened at Hanoi airport to reveal the French president being shoved in the face by his wife was not the first red flag in their relationship. The first red flag was the fact that, when they met, Emmanuel Macron was a 15-year-old schoolboy, and Brigitte a 39-year-old drama teacher directing a school production. For all they have waxed lyrical in interviews since about the special nature of their love ('when you're in love, you don't choose,' he says; 'little by little, I became completely subjugated by the intelligence of this young man,' she gushes); for all the media obligingly dance around their troubling origin story (note how often reports of this period in their lives refer to him not as a child but as 'the future president' and to her as his 'childhood sweetheart'); this was no mere age gap relationship, and only one of them was a child. Now he is 47 and she is 72, the appropriate response may well be to shrug and say good on them both. But back when they met in 1993, she was an adult woman, and he was a boy. If a 15-year-old girl enters a sexual relationship with a teacher 25 years her senior, the usual and correct response is outrage. When the genders are reversed, it's a very French love story. READ MORE But the story of how the Macrons met has always seemed to inspire an uncharacteristic reticence in the media – particularly the kind of outlets that usually relish nothing more than deconstructing every aspect of a first lady's existence. This conspiracy of coyness may be why the incident on the tarmac in Vietnam earlier this week was met with such an odd response. Sure, the split second of slightly blurred footage immediately went around the world and was thoroughly dissected: the force with which she shoved him in the face, using both of her hands. The way his head jerks back. His look of shock. The speed at which he recovered his composure and waved to the cameras. Her refusal to take his arm going down the aeroplane steps. Yet, for all the coverage, the reaction was weirdly muted. Much commentary opted for the strained, bemused tone you might use should you find yourself trapped at an uncomfortable dinner with a warring couple. The moment when aeroplane doors opened at Hanoi airport to reveal the French president being shoved in the face by his wife was not the first red flag in their relationship. The Elysée Palace responded at first by suggesting the video was a Russian deepfake, and then spun it as a 'moment of closeness', the couple 'decompressing'. Macron himself said they were 'bickering, or rather joking': 'The video becomes a sort of geoplanetary catastrophe. In the world we live in, we don't have a lot of time to lose. This is all a bit of nonsense,' he said, demonstrating himself to be not averse to spouting geoplanetary nonsense of his own. Those who thought otherwise were 'crazies', 'nuts' and clearly had 'sugar rushing to their heads'. So that's settled. Nothing to see here. Except, of course, anyone with a smartphone and a social media account did see it. And yet, just as they have always done where the Macrons are concerned, the media seemed to largely acquiesce to being told that they did not see what they saw. Politico characterised it a 'spat'. The New York Times led with Macron's dismissal of it as 'nonsense'. USA Today went with a translation of his words as 'horsing around'. The Sun called it 'embarrassing'. One commentator decided that it was not 'just a shove [but] a symbol, a barometer of a world out of sorts, reflexively violent, perpetually on edge'. Macron is, of course, entitled to his privacy and to our compassion – I can't imagine anyone looking at footage and not being struck, above all, by his humanity. But he is also a public figure, and his willingness to brush off a moment of aggressive physical contact from an intimate partner is, at best, a missed opportunity to address the stigma surrounding domestic abuse. [ Emmanuel Macron plays down video of shove from wife: 'It's nonsense' Opens in new window ] At worst, it sends a harmful message about what men are supposed to quietly put up with. The obvious question – and yet only a handful asked it – was whether we would be so willing to chalk this up as a moment of mild embarrassment if he was a woman and she was a man. Of course we wouldn't. When advertising mogul Charles Saatchi was photographed grabbing his then wife Nigella Lawson by the throat in a London restaurant in 2013, the reaction was swift and unequivocal. It amounted to (with a handful of notable exceptions, mostly involving older men in the media with social connections to Saatchi) horror and revulsion. The images were more graphic and left little room for ambiguity, but the context was similar: an unguarded moment that hinted at something disturbing beneath the glossy surface of the lives of an apparently happy power couple. Saatchi's first reaction was that it was a 'playful tiff' ; Lawson's was to pack up and leave with her children. The editor of the Sunday People, which first published the images, later explained the rationale for it: 'Our debate kept coming back to what was going on behind closed doors if Saatchi was able to behave like this in public. We concluded that there was a genuine public interest ... We couldn't think of any circumstances in which his behaviour could be justified.' [ The pictures of Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson were disturbing. But so too was the public rush to judgment Opens in new window ] Those same considerations ought to apply here – yet many commentators seem to have no trouble coming up with circumstances to justify Brigitte Macron's behaviour. Perhaps it's just that many of us are incapable of reconciling the idea that a man in a position of power can also be someone vulnerable to the possibility of domestic abuse. There are well-known reasons men underreport domestic violence – among them is the fear they won't be taken seriously. Based on events this week, they're probably right.
The Independent
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
‘Le Slap' talks to the dark truth at the core of Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron's marriage
Was it just 'joking around', or, as the official party line claims, a 'moment of closeness' between the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte, that set tongues wagging around the world this week? After a video of Brigitte Macron, 72, appearing to shove her 47-year-old husband in the face went viral on Monday, 'Le Slap' – or ' Slapgate' as it quickly became known – went viral. Probably because it didn't look as though the pair were 'decompressing one last time' before beginning their diplomatic visit to Hanoi, Vietnam, as a source desperately claimed. Initially, conspiracy theorists claimed that the footage of the heated row was part of a plot to discredit the president, and had come straight from the Kremlin. In a world of AI-generated videos, where a pope can be seen wearing a Balenciaga coat and Macron can be spied dancing to 1980s hit song 'Voyage Voyage' by French singer Desireless in a video he once made himself to make a point about deepfakes, it seemed it was something to consider. Certainly, Macron's first reaction was to condemn the videos of him, saying the footage had been manipulated by people he described as 'crackpots'. He referred to other incidents, including the images shot on a train to Kyiv, in which some accounts falsely claimed he could be seen sharing cocaine. For the rest of us, though, this incident looked different, and it felt as though the president was putting on quite the show in an attempt to dismiss the furore. The Macrons put on a united front, yet there was ultimately no avoiding their frustration as media attention grew: by the end of the week, Macron admitted that the video showing the altercation had become what he called 'some kind of planetary catastrophe' (a slight exaggeration). But regardless of how the Macrons tried to frame the incident, it was a sharp-eyed glimpse into the couple's relationship; an indication of underlying tension between them coming to the surface. Perhaps it's just the tip of the iceberg. Because it's no secret – though it is often too easily brushed off, or forgotten – that at the heart of the Macrons' relationship lies an ethical dilemma at best; a gross abuse of power at worst. The couple met when Brigitte Trogneux was 39 and Emmanuel was just 15. Brigitte was already married to banker André Auzière, and a mother of three children – Sebastien, Laurence, and Tiphaine. In fact, one of her daughters, Laurence, was in the same class as the boy her mother would eventually marry, at La Providence High School, a Catholic secondary school in Amiens. Emmanuel was 'intellectually gifted' and 'precocious' as a teenager, and he and his future wife bonded over literature and theatre, Brigitte told Paris Match during an interview in 2017. The two of them wrote a play together; she later recalled, during the time she spent with him, having a 'feeling I was working with Mozart'. 'The writing became an excuse,' she said. 'I felt that we had always known each other.' Despite their 'bond' remaining supposedly platonic, by the following year, Emmanuel's parents were removing him from the school, concerned after finding out about the relationship through a family friend. 'We just couldn't believe it,' his mother, Francoise Nogues-Macron, told Anne Fulda, author of the book Emmanuel Macron: A Perfect Young Man. 'What is clear is that when Emmanuel met Brigitte, we couldn't just say, 'That's great'.' Physically separating the pair didn't work – by the time the French president was 17, he was already declaring that he would marry Brigitte one day. Later, he would write in his 2016 book, Révolution, that he was captivated by her intelligence and charisma. 'I resisted for a long time, but love is stronger than conventions,' he told Elle magazine in 2020. The thing is, it was hardly something as simple as 'conventions' that made their relationship objectionable – the exact year they met, either 1993 or 1994, has reportedly never been confirmed, in what is thought by some to be an effort to obscure legal 'complications' or questions that might be raised, since Emmanuel was just a child. While Brigitte has always insisted that they only fell in love after he was 15 (which is the age of consent in France), she risked serving three years in prison, since the law bans sexual relationships between teachers and pupils under 18. Regardless of the justifications, then, she knew it was wrong. The couple didn't marry until years later, in October 2007, when Emmanuel was 29 and Brigitte was 54, but the foundations of their relationship were set: a narrative of manipulation, societal ostracism, and a profound imbalance of power that has shaped their personal and political lives ever since. Their age gap is more than just a number – it's a gap that would rarely, if ever, go without objection if it were between an older man and a teenage girl. Brigitte was also in a position of power, a teacher – an authority figure who was responsible for a vulnerable and impressionable adolescent. At their wedding, Emmanuel acknowledged the obvious peculiarity, saying, 'We're not a normal couple, but we are a couple.' Initially, they faced a backlash to their unusual relationship. According to Maëlle Brun, who wrote an unauthorised biography of Brigitte Macron, there were repercussions of sorts; they were ostracised, anonymous letters were sent to their families, and there were even instances of spitting on their doorstep. The friends that Brigitte had made through her first marriage disappeared – yet the Macrons' relationship apparently flourished. In the years since, as Emmanuel charted his rise to the top of French politics, Brigitte has been described as a 'shadow power' at his side. She is believed to be an influential figure in his career; there have been reports of her becoming involved in his ministerial duties and presidential campaigns, despite grumbling over the impropriety of this – and perceived conflicts of interest – among the public. For years, despite the doubts that have surrounded their relationship because of how it began, they've been good at keeping up appearances in front of the camera. But this week's footage talks to the tension at the core of their marriage: an imbalance of power that they have seemingly never escaped. Lip-reading experts claimed that, in the moments after the 'slap' – which, really, looked more like a shove in the face – Brigitte muttered, 'Dégage, espèce de loser,' as her husband offered his arm – in English, 'Stay away, you loser.' A funny joke, as Emmanuel claims? It seems unlikely. A clearer angle, perhaps, on the dark heart of a controversial relationship – one that has left an indelible mark on the couple's lives and careers. Though it is often portrayed as a romantic saga, the story of the Macrons is layered with complexities, and begs for scrutiny. In the golden salons of the Élysée, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron may project the defiant image of a couple who triumphed against the odds and have defied scandal and stigma. But beyond the veneer of fairytale romance lies something that is not just more complex, but far more uncomfortable: a relationship that began in the blurred margins of power and abuse, with this week's events leaving many wondering if it remains there.
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Trump's advice to Macron after airplane shoving video: 'Make sure the door remains closed'
President Donald Trump offered some advice for French President Emmanuel Macron after a video of Macron's wife apparently shoving him in the face in front of an open plane door went viral: "Make sure the door remains closed." Trump downplayed the incident when asked about it May 30 during an Oval Office event. "He's fine too. They're fine," Trump said. "They're two really good people I know them very well." Macron called speculation about the incident with his wife, Brigitte Macron, "nonsense," saying it showed the couple "joking around." The clip was taken after the couple landed in Hanoi, Vietnam, as part of their Southeast Asia tour. Trump brought Elon Musk into the Oval Office May 30 to praise his work with the Department of Government Efficiency as the billionaire steps away from the job. Musk had a black eye, which he said was delivered by his young son. "I wasn't anywhere near France," Musk joked. Contributing: Nicole Fallert This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump downplays video of Emmanuel Macron's wife shoving him
