French President Emmanuel Macron was shoved in the face by his wife as the pair touched down for a state visit in Vietnam, with a source close to the leader admitting the pair had a “squabble.”
Shocking footage of the incident shows the president’s plane door opening to reveal Macron at the entrance in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, on Sunday evening.
Suddenly, his wife Brigitte’s arms emerge from the left of the open doorway as she places both hands on her husband’s face and shoves him firmly.
Macron appears startled — but quickly recovers when realizing he is in view, and turns to smile and wave through the open door.
The French first lady remains concealed inside the aircraft, making it impossible to see her facial expression or body language.
Brigitte then doesn’t take her husband’s proffered arm as they walk down the staircase, where Vietnamese officials greet them.
Macron’s office initially denied the authenticity of the footage before confirming it was genuine.
The incident was later dismissed as a harmless “squabble” by a close associate of the president, cited anonymously by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“It was a moment when the president and his wife were decompressing one last time before the start of the trip by joking around,” another source told AFP.
“It’s a moment of togetherness. No more was needed to feed the mills of the conspiracy theorists,” the source added, accusing pro-Russian disinformation accounts for spinning the clip.
Brigitte Macron, 72, has been married to her husband, 47, since 2007.
The couple met in 1993 when she was a 39-year-old high school teacher and the future French head of state was her 15-year-old student and a classmate of her daughter.
Macron touched down in the former French colony of Vietnam for the start of his week-long tour of Southeast Asia.
He is expected to pitch France as a reliable alternative to the United States and China.
Other stops on the tour include Indonesia and Singapore.