EMMANUEL Macron and his wife Brigitte have put on a united front for the world’s cameras a day after the shocking face slap drama.
Viral footage has overshadowed the beginning of the couple’s Southeast Asia tour, depicting the French leader’s wife playfully shoving him in the mouth and jaw after their arrival in Vietnam.
Furious Macron attempted to downplay the incident last night by claiming the pair were “squabbling and, rather joking”.
He added that the unbelievable incident has been overblown into “a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe”.
The French leader also argued that the clip and viral reaction to it offered a cautionary tale about disinformation in the social media age.
Today, Macron and the First Lady were seen arm-in-arm as they arrived at Hanoi’s University of Science and Technology, where the French president was scheduled to give a speech.
The couple’s appearance together comes shortly after Macron denounced “crackpot” conspiracy theorists who, he claims, are trying to spread speculation about the nature of their marriage behind closed doors.
Footage of the shove was initially denied by Macron’s office as being an AI-generated fake – but were forced to retract their statement and admit it was genuine.
His office said: “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.”
The unbelievable moment captured at Hanoi airport showed Macron facing his wife – who is out of the frame – as the plane’s doors opened.
Despite Brigitte not being visible, her arms are soon seen raising as she shoves a stern-looking Macron in the face.
Appearing shocked, the French leader immediately notices the doors open and quickly turns to wave at the sea of cameras at the bottom of the plane steps.
Despite Macron’s attempts to defuse claims that they weren’t in a heated argument, the couple’s body language immediately after the push seems to suggest otherwise.
Brigitte and Macron emerge together from the aircraft and walk down the staircase, with the French leader extending his arm to his wife.
But she takes hold of the handrail of the walkway for support instead, potentially due to an explosive argument they could have had inside.
The French leader has repeatedly been targeted by conspiracy theories and deepfakes.
He previously had to deny “false and fabricated” rumours his wife was born a man, dubbing the transgender claims as being typified misogynistic online attacks on women.
And recently he blasted a fake Russian claim that he had a bag of cocaine on the table when he was pictured on his way to Kyiv with Keir Starmer and Germany’s Friedrich Merz.
Drawing comparison with the shove video and the cocaine tissue claim, Macron said in Vietnam last night: “For three weeks, there have been people who have watched videos and who think that I shared a bag of cocaine, that I had a mano-a-mano with a Turkish president and now that I am having a domestic dispute with my wife.
“In these three videos, I took a tissue, shook someone’s hand and just joked with my wife, as we do quite often. Nothing more.
“None of this is true. So everyone needs to calm down.”
The politician was just 15 when he started a relationship with the then mother-of-three, his French literature teacher.
Macron is in Hanoi to begin a week-long tour of Southeast Asia, where he will also visit Indonesia and Singapore.
Macron and Brigitte’s body language examined
By Eleonora Girotto, Video Journalist
A BODY language expert has labelled the incident between Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte as “shocking” and “very unfunny”.
Judi James said that the French President insisting that the shove was “playful” is worrying because it’s “trying to normalise something that we should be shocked by”.
The expert told The Sun: “We quite rightly should be shocked by it, and it absolutely shouldn’t matter who’s doing it to who.
“That’s not good natural behaviour. We can see Macron, who very much the alpha male leader with his body language, preparing to get off the plane.
“The door opens and anybody looking at him and his wife obviously more than anybody else would know that he’s getting into professional mode.
“He’s about to step out in Vietnam on the world stage, and he’s kind of pumped up accordingly. He seems to talk to his wife at the side who we can’t see at this point.
“But then, shockingly, her hand comes out and presses against his face, the nose as well.
“And if anybody wants to try this on themselves, you’ll feel how vulnerable it makes you feel. And pushes it to the point where he reels sideways.
“So it’s not a little stroke or anything like that, and then there’s even a final extra push at the end that I think technically could have toppled him over.
“You know, this is not playing. It certainly wouldn’t be playing at work or anywhere. It’s entirely inappropriate.
“We can see Macron, his expression suddenly changes to a micro gesture of shock before he turns around and seems to have a conversation with his wife.
“Then when we see them emerging, obviously, there’s this attempt to sort of do a glow up – nothing just happened.
“He does a little wave before this happens. But then when they come out together formally, he does put his hand out and seems to extend it, either to hold her hand or maybe to help her down the steps or to usher her first.
“But she ignores him and we get both of them coming down, holding the opposite handrail, making their way down. So it looks very, I would say, frosty. But I would still say that Macron looks rather shocked.
“And we can see later on, if we look at a close up of his hand, we can see that it’s bored into a fist. The knuckles look white. So clearly a lot of pent up tension there as a result, quite rightly.
“I’m pretty sure that over the next few days, we’re going to see a superhuman effort to try and look like the sweetest, most loving couple. And I’m sure that we’re going to see Brigitte looking a lot more submissive and make him look a lot more dominant.”
