Macron on the slap he received from Brigitte: That's how we joke
A video capturing the moment when Brigitte Macron pushed her husband Emmanuel's face made the rounds in French and international media on Monday. The President of France dismissed speculation that the cameras had witnessed a quarrel, saying the two of them are simply “jokers.”
On Monday, French media attempted to analyze the interaction caught on camera as the couple exited the plane on Sunday at the beginning of their Southeast Asia tour.
The headline of an article on the website of the daily newspaper “Le Parisien” asked: “Slap or ‘spat’? Images of Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron disembarking in Vietnam spark many comments.”
Macron later told reporters that the couple – married since 2007 after meeting in high school where he was a student and she was a teacher – were just joking.
“We’re joking around, and in fact, I’m joking with my wife,” he said, adding that the incident was being exaggerated.
French President Emmanuel Macron was slapped by his wife during a family dispute that was caught on camera.
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) May 26, 2025
The incident occurred shortly after the French presidential plane landed in Vietnam.
What exactly enraged his wife remains unclear. pic.twitter.com/O8bnm4wVMC
"It's becoming some kind of geo-planetary catastrophe."
He added that other videos have also been misinterpreted, such as those allegedly showing him with a bag of cocaine on a train to Kyiv.
“None of this is true and everyone needs to calm down,” Macron ordered the global public.
His office had previously offered a similar explanation.
“It was a moment when the President and his wife were relaxing one last time before the start of the trip. It was a moment of complicity. That alone was enough to give conspiracy theorists ammunition,” his office said.
