SocietyGazette.com Society Gazette News
Related Articles
French President Emmanuel Macron denied on Monday any “domestic dispute” with his wife, Brigitte, after a video appeared to show her shoving his face away as they arrived in Vietnam for a diplomatic visit.
They were “joking as we often do”, he told reporters in Hanoi, adding that other videos had been misinterpreted as showing him sharing a bag of cocaine or confronting the Turkish president.
“None of these are true,” he said, and “everyone needs to calm down”.
His office on Monday also downplayed on incident in which his wife appeared to push his face away.
Footage shot by the Associated Press news agency in Hanoi on Sunday evening shows Macron’s plane door opening to reveal him.
His wife Brigitte’s arms 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.
The couple proceed down the staircase for the official welcome by Vietnamese officials, though Brigitte Macron does not take her husband’s offered arm.
Macron’s office initially denied the authenticity of the images, before they were confirmed as genuine.
A close associate of the president later described the incident as a couple’s harmless “squabble”.
Another member of his entourage 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.
“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.
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.
He will also visit Indonesia and Singapore.
AFP
Watch video below
𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐬 ‘𝐝𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐞’ 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐰𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐯𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨
French President Emmanuel Macron denied on Monday any “domestic dispute” with his wife, Brigitte, after a video appeared to… pic.twitter.com/j6QGsi0Ai3
