French President Emmanuel Macron was pushed in the face by his wife, first lady Brigitte Macron, in a video that’s been circulating online.
On Sunday, May 25, the couple arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, at the start of a Southeast Asia tour, when Emmanuel was pictured exiting the presidential plane, Reuters reported.
A hand was then seen reaching out and pushing Emmanuel, 47, in the face, before Brigitte, 72, appeared alongside her husband, wearing a red outfit. The person who pushed the president was also wearing red, as seen in the clip, which was shared by outlets including the BBC.
Despite the politician initially appearing a little surprised by the push, it didn’t take long for him to compose himself. The couple, who have been married since 2007, then walked down the plane’s steps together.
The Élysée Palace initially denied the accuracy of the images, per French outlet Le Figaro. However, they have since downplayed the incident.
A palace official said, “It was a moment when the president and his wife were relaxing one last time before the start of the trip by having a laugh,” per Reuters.
“It was a moment of closeness,” the official added, according to the news agency.
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Emmanuel insisted that the couple were “just joking about as we do,” per the BBC. “We are bickering and joking with my wife, and a video becomes a sort of geoplanetary catastrophe,” Macron told reporters on Monday, according to ABC News. “In the world we live in, we don’t have a lot of time to lose” on discussing such topics, he added.
The Macrons’ marriage had a controversial start, as Brigitte previously told Paris Match in a 2023 interview that entertaining a relationship with her now-husband was initially “crippling” due to their 24-year age gap.
She was a 39-year-old drama teacher at a Catholic school in northern France when Emmanuel, then 15, developed feelings for her.
“For me,” she said — as translated by The Independent — “such a young boy was crippling.”
While Emmanuel’s parents initially suspected he was dating Brigitte’s daughter, the truth eventually came out and he was sent off to a boarding school.
“Emmanuel had to leave for Paris,” Brigitte previously recalled. “I told myself that he would fall in love with someone his [own] age. It didn’t happen.”
The two kept in touch, but for a while Brigitte tried to keep some distance between them so as not to “wreck” the lives of her own children, who were close to Emmanuel’s age.
“That lasted 10 years, the time to put them on the rails. You can imagine what they were hearing,” she said. “But I didn’t want to miss out on my life.”
Emmanuel became president of France in 2017, around 10 years after he and Brigitte tied the knot.
