{"id":54300,"date":"2025-05-27T09:49:06","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T09:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/it-was-a-joke-president-macron-shrugs-off-viral-push-from-wife\/"},"modified":"2025-05-27T09:22:57","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T09:22:57","slug":"it-was-a-joke-president-macron-shrugs-off-viral-push-from-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/it-was-a-joke-president-macron-shrugs-off-viral-push-from-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It was a joke\u2019: President Macron shrugs off viral push from wife"},"content":{"rendered":"

The brief but widely circulated footage shows Macron stepping out of a plane in Hanoi on Sunday evening as part of a state visit to Vietnam. <\/p>\n

As he emerges at the aircraft doorway, Brigitte Macron\u2019s hands suddenly reach out and shove his face. The president appears momentarily startled but quickly regains his composure and waves to the press waiting on the tarmac.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in Hanoi on Monday, Macron, who is 24 years younger than his 72-year-old wife, sought to clarify the situation: \u201cThere\u2019s a video showing me joking and teasing my wife, and somehow that becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were just joking around, as we do quite often.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

SHOCKING: French President Emmanuel Macron SHOVED IN THE FACE by his wife Brigitte as they exit a plane in Vietnam! This looks like an EXTREMELY toxic relationship. Imagine your husband leading a nation, trying to stand up to powerhouses like Putin & Trump & his toxic wife\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/7PWc1CkaG7<\/a><\/p>\n

— Tehseen Poonawalla Official 🇮🇳 (@tehseenp) May 26, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The \u00c9lys\u00e9e Palace, after initially downplaying the footage, later explained that the couple were \u201cunwinding\u201d and \u201cplayfully teasing each other\u201d ahead of the start of their formal engagements. <\/p>\n

A presidential source quoted by CNN described the incident as \u201ca moment of closeness,\u201d adding: \u201cNo more was needed to feed the mills of the conspiracy theorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Macron, who has increasingly found himself the target of disinformation campaigns linked to Russia, criticised the amplification of the clip by what he described as a familiar ecosystem of online actors. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have thought I shared a bag of cocaine, tussled with the Turkish president, now that I\u2019m having a domestic dispute with my wife\u2026 None of this is true. Everyone needs to calm down,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n

Earlier this month, the \u00c9lys\u00e9e also refuted another viral claim, circulated by pro-Kremlin accounts and U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, that Macron was using cocaine aboard a train to Kyiv with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. <\/p>\n

The claim stemmed from a crumpled tissue seen in footage. French officials responded by posting an image with the caption: \u201cThis is a tissue. For blowing your nose.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the disinformation swirl continued, Macron emphasised the importance of not letting such moments overshadow diplomacy. <\/p>\n

\u201cCommentators even explained this morning that my diplomacy was that of a battered husband,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the president\u2019s Southeast Asia trip continued on a more serious note. France and Vietnam signed \u20ac9 billion worth of deals on Monday, covering sectors including aerospace, defense, energy, transportation, and pharmaceuticals. <\/p>\n

Among them was an agreement for Vietnam to purchase 20 Airbus aircraft \u2014 part of efforts to boost bilateral ties amid growing trade instability linked to U.S. tariffs under Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

The visit marks the first formal state trip to Vietnam by a French presidential couple in nearly a decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

French President Emmanuel Macron has dismissed speculation over a viral video that appears to show his wife Brigitte pushing him in the face, calling the moment a light-hearted exchange and ridiculing the controversy it sparked online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":2000088046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[192],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-54300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-wycliffe-nyamasege"],"bylines":[{"id":192,"name":"Wycliffe Nyamasege","slug":"wycliffe-nyamasege","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":131}],"contributors":[{"id":192,"name":"Wycliffe Nyamasege","slug":"wycliffe-nyamasege","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":131}],"featured_image":{"id":2000088046,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/2620510629be693.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/2620510629be693.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/2620510629be693.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/2620510629be693.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/2620510629be693.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/2620510629be693.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000088046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54300"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=54300"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=54300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}