Before Emmanuel Macron even got off the plane, a blink-and-you-miss-it moment occurred.
French PresidentEmmanuel Macron has spoken out against a startling viral video that seems to show his wife Brigitte “slapping” him before they got off the plane.
Yesterday, the couple touched down in Hanoi, Vietnam, to start their South-East Asia trip, which will also include stops in Indonesia and Singapore.
In addition to being Macron’s first official visit to Vietnam, their journey is the first French president to visit the country in almost ten years.
However, a blink-and-you-miss-it incident that occurred before the president even got off the plane managed to slightly obscure this.
As workmen opened the door, Macron stood beside the plane’s egress, according to Associated Press footage.
An arm emerged out of nowhere and seemed to “slap” Macron’s face as they prepared the doorway and stairway for the couple’s departure.
His wife, wearing a red blazer, came out behind him a few seconds later, and the two of them went down the steps to the runway.
One user posted the video to Twitter with the comment, “Okay, but did you guys SEE @EmmanuelMacron’s wife literally push his face like she was swatting a fly?”
“Like she thought she was invisible or something and Macron just laughed it off, shaking hands like, ‘No big deal, just got publicly slapped by my wife, move along’.”
Another said: “The president is slapped by a hand that comes out of a red jacket. This isn’t a joke; it’s the official arrival of Macron and Brigitte in Vietnam.
Macron was “momentarily stunned” before “smoothing it over with a wave,” according to a third.
Macron has since stated that the exchange may not have been what it first appeared to be, despite the fact that the alleged altercation unavoidably set the internet into overdrive.
According to France24, he then informed reporters that they had just been fooling about, saying, “We are horsing around and, really, joking with my wife.”
The incident has been greatly exaggerated, Macron continued, adding, “It becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.”
In an earlier statement, his office reiterated that the pair, who have been married since 2007, were simply having fun.
“It was a moment where the president and his wife were horsing around to decompress one last time before the trip started,” the statement read.
It’s a complicit moment. It was all that was required to provide conspiracy theorists with fodder.