The video of French President Emmanuel Macron being pushed away by his wife, Brigitte, before they disembarked from their plane to start a tour of Southeast Asia this weekend, is being circulated worldwide.
On Sunday, as the French president and First Lady arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, for the beginning of their tour, in a video taken by AP, a uniformed man can be seen pulling open the plane door and revealing the president standing inside, dressed in a suit and talking to someone who was not visible.
Brigitte Macron’s arms — in red — were seen reaching out and pushing Macron away, with one hand covering his mouth and part of his nose while the other was on his jaw. The French leader recoiled, turning his head away. Then, apparently realizing that he was on camera, he broke into a smile and gave a little wave.
The moment quickly made headlines in France, with media trying to decipher the interaction that cameras spotted through the just-opened door of the plane.
Macron later told reporters that the couple were simply joking around.
In subsequent images, Macron and his wife, wearing a red jacket, appeared at the top of the stairs. He offered an arm, but she did not take it. They walked down the carpeted stairs side by side.
The French leader argued that the images and reaction to them offered a cautionary tale about disinformation in the social media age, noting that in recent weeks, other videos had been used to circulate made-up stories about him.
“Everyone needs to calm down,” he said.
His office also downplayed the interaction.
“It’s a moment of complicity. It was all that was needed to give ammunition to the conspiracy theorists,” his office said.
Brigitte Macron was Brigitte Auzière, a married mother of three children, when they met at his high school. A teacher, she supervised the drama club where Emmanuel Macron, a literature lover, was a member.
He moved to Paris for his last year of high school but promised to marry Brigitte. She later moved to the French capital to join him and divorced before they finally married.