French President Emmanuel Macron has publicly addressed a viral video that appears to show his wife, Brigitte Macron, striking him in the face.
The wild footage, captured by Associated Press, shows the 47-year-old standing at the aircraft door at Hanoi Airport.
As the door opens, Brigitte’s hands are seen reaching towards her husband’s face in what resembles a brief shove.
The French President, seemingly surprised, quickly turns and waves to the awaiting media before the couple walks up the stairs. His wife is then seen declining to take his offered arm.
Watch the moment below:
The video quickly circulated across social media and news outlets, prompting widespread speculation and accusations from men, including Russian state media and French far-right commentators.
Initially dismissed as probable “fake news” by the Élysée Palace, Macron later confirmed the video’s authenticity but insisted it was taken out of context.
“There’s a video showing me joking and teasing my wife, and somehow that becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe, with people even coming up with theories to explain it,” Macron said, cited by News.com.au.
“We are horsing around, having a joke, and I was surprised by that, and that becomes a sort of geopolitical disaster,” he continued. “It’s nonsense. People read all kinds of stupidity into things.”
The Guardian reported that a spokesperson from the Élysée Palace echoed the President’s remarks, describing the interaction as “a moment of complicity” and stating the couple were “decompressing one last time” before beginning their official engagements in Southeast Asia.
Brigitte’s face was not shown in the video, and the palace added that the moment, while brief, had been seized upon by conspiracy theorists. “It wasn’t even a slap,” said one palace source.
The video marks the second time Macron has been the subject of viral misinformation campaigns.
A previous video falsely suggested the French President was using cocaine during a diplomatic train trip to Kyiv with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
The clip, which showed Macron picking up a tissue from a table, was misrepresented online as an attempt to hide drugs.
French officials swiftly debunked the rumor, stating that the item in question was merely a tissue “for blowing your nose,” and condemned the allegations as part of a deliberate disinformation effort.
“When European unity becomes inconvenient, disinformation goes so far as to make a simple tissue look like drugs,” the statement read. “This fake news is being spread by France’s enemies, both abroad and at home. We must remain vigilant against manipulation.”
Reflecting on the string of misinterpreted clips, Macron remarked that people “have thought I shared a bag of cocaine, tussled with the Turkish president, now that I’m having a domestic dispute with my wife”.
“None of this is true. Everyone needs to calm down,” he concluded.
