After a video was released showing his wife Brigitte pushing his head away with both hands before leaving a plane in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, French President Emmanuel Macron's explanation was: "We were just joking."
The moment from Sunday evening quickly made headlines in France, with the media trying to decipher it, with the website of the daily newspaper "Le Parisien" asking: "Slap or 'quarrel'?"
Macron told reporters that they "sometimes get along, they actually joke around." They have been married since 2007, having met at high school where he was a student and she was a married teacher and mother of three.
In the Associated Press footage of the plane they were on opening its doors in Hanoi, the president is seen ready for a ceremonial welcome, and Brigitte is pushing him away with her outstretched arms, covering his mouth and nose. He steps away, then, apparently realizing that everyone is watching, smiles and waves to the hosts, then says something to his wife, nervously retreats to the plane, and then they exit together without any contact with each other.
The pictures show that Macron offered his hand to his wife at the top of the stairs, but she did not accept it.
Macron commented that the scene and the reactions on social media are a warning about the "age of disinformation" and stated that there had recently been footage of a fictional case of him and the leaders of Great Britain and Germany taking cocaine, and that there had also been problematic interpretations of a video of him and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holding hands after shaking hands.
"Everyone needs to calm down," Macron said.
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