The office of French President Emmanuel Macron has dismissed suggestions of discord after footage emerged appearing to show his wife, Brigitte Macron, pushing him in the face before the couple disembarked from a plane in Vietnam.
The video, filmed on Sunday as the Macrons arrived in Vietnam to mark the start of his Southeast Asia tour, shows the President standing in the doorway of the aircraft when a pair of hands—belonging to a person wearing a red blazer, later identified as Brigitte—reach out and appear to shove him away.
Macron briefly recoils, turns his head, and then smiles and waves at the press.
Brigitte did not take her husband’s arm as the couple walked down the plane’s steps together.
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The moment was widely circulated in French media and sparked commentary about the nature of the interaction, with the headline of the daily newspaper Le Parisien asking: ‘Slap or Squabble?’
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Macron said he had been “joking” with his wife, adding that “everyone needs to calm down.”
His office issued a similar response, saying “it was a moment of closeness” between the pair.
“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,” his office said, according to AP.
The French president used the episode to caution against misinterpretations online, pointing to false claims circulated earlier this month that a crumpled up tissue he picked up during a train trip to Ukraine was a bag of cocaine.
Here’s what we know about the couple.
How did Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron meet?
The Macrons’ relationship has long attracted scrutiny in France.
The couple first met when Macron was a 15-year-old student at La Providence, a French private school in Amiens, where Brigitte worked as a teacher. The pair reportedly grew close while co-writing a play together, when Brigitte oversaw a theatre workshop.
The president’s parents initially thought that their son had feelings for Brigitte’s daughter, a classmate. But once they discovered the nature of the relationship between Emmanuel and Brigitte, who was married to André-Louis Auzière at the time and had three children, they sent their son to finish his final school year at Lycée Henri-IV in Paris.
“When Emmanuel met Brigitte, we certainly did not say, ‘How wonderful!,’” said Jean-Michel Macron, father of Emmanuel Macron, according to a biography of the President.
The then-schoolboy reportedly told Brigitte, before leaving: “Whatever you do, I will marry you.”
The couple eventually married in 2007, when he was 29 and she was 54, one year after her divorce.
What role has Brigitte Macron played as First Lady?
Following his presidential election in 2017, Macron released a “charter” to clarify his partner’s role within government.
Under the new direction, the President stated that Brigitte would work to represent France at international summits and meetings, support Macron’s endeavors as head of state, and work with charities and other cultural organizations in the “fields of disability, education, health, culture, child protection and gender equality,” according to the Elysee Palace.
The First Lady regularly holds Le Gala des Pièces Jaunes, a charity event in Paris to raise funds for sick and hospitalized children.
France’s First Lady has also been outspoken against cyberbullying. During a 2019 meeting, she read letters sent to her from parents and students explaining the dire effects online bullying can have.
“It’s relentless. Before, we went home at 4:00 pm and that was it, we could relax,” she said. “Now, it’s day and night.”
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