French President Emmanuel Macron downplayed the incident caught on camera of his wife, Brigitte, shoving his face away as they arrived in Vietnam for a visit on Sunday.
On Monday, he denied having a “domestic dispute” with his wife, telling reporters that they were “joking, as we often do.”
“We are squabbling and, rather, joking with my wife,” he said, adding that the incident was being blown out of proportion and turned into “a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.”
Earlier on Monday, an Elysee official called the situation “a moment of closeness,” when “the president and his wife were relaxing one last time before the start of the trip by having a laugh.”
Video footage showing Brigitte seemingly pushing her husband away with both hands on his face before they got off their plane to begin a tour of Southeast Asia sparked a lot of speculation in the French media.
The media tried to decipher the brief interaction between Macron and his wife that cameras caught through the recently opened door of the plane.
In a video taken by the Associated Press when the Macrons arrived in Hanoi on Sunday, a uniformed man can be seen opening the plane door, revealing the president standing inside. He was dressed in a suit and talking to someone who was out of view.
Shortly after the door opened, the video appears to show Brigitte Macron’s arms reaching out and pushing Macron away, with one hand covering his mouth and part of his nose while the other was on his jaw.
The French president recoiled and turned his head away. Then, apparently realizing that he was on camera, Macron broke into a smile, and then waved.
The couple then descended the carpeted steps together, with Brigitte declining her husband’s arm.
A source close to the French president said that the Russian state broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today) had hinted that Macron was being beaten by his wife.
The footage has been replayed multiple times on Russian state TV and has circulated online on accounts hostile to Macron.
On Monday, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram that Emmanuel Macron received “a right hook from his wife” when the couple arrived in Hanoi.
Earlier, Zakharova and American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones had wrongly accused Macron and his German and British counterparts of using drugs on a train from Ukraine.
They based this accusation on a low-definition video that showed them mistaking a crumpled tissue for a bag of cocaine.
Although the claims were later debunked, they prompted a strong reaction from Elysee Palace and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. – DW.
