Hanoi, Vietnam — French President Emmanuel Macron’s workplace on Monday downplayed an incident during which his spouse appeared to push his face away as he arrived in Vietnam to start a Southeast Asian tour.
Video shot by The Related Press in Hanoi on Sunday night reveals Macron’s airplane door opening, revealing him. His spouse Brigitte’s arms then emerge from the left of the open doorway, she locations each fingers on her husband’s face and provides it a shove.
The president seems startled however shortly recovers and turns to wave by means of the open door. She stays hid by the plane physique, making it inconceivable to see her facial features or physique language.
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They proceed down the staircase for the official welcome by Vietnamese officers, although Brigitte Macron doesn’t take her husband’s supplied arm.
The video clip circulated quickly on-line, promoted significantly by accounts which are habitually hostile to the French chief.
Macron’s workplace initially denied the authenticity of the pictures, earlier than they have been confirmed as real.
Later, Macron instructed reporters that he and his spouse had simply been joking round.
“We’re horsing round and, actually, joking with my spouse,” he mentioned, calling studies on the incident overblown: “It turns into a kind of geo-planetary disaster.”
A detailed affiliate of the president earlier described the incident as a pair’s innocent “squabble.”
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One other member of his entourage additionally performed down the importance of the incident.
“It was a second when the president and his spouse have been decompressing one final time earlier than the beginning of the journey by joking round,” the second supply instructed reporters, together with AFP’s.
“It is a second of togetherness. No extra was wanted to feed the mills of the conspiracy theorists,” the supply added, blaming pro-Russian accounts for detrimental feedback in regards to the incident.
The Macrons acquired married in 2007, however they met when the president was nonetheless in highschool, and he or she was a trainer.
Vietnam is the primary cease on an nearly week-long tour of Southeast Asia for Macron, the place he’ll pitch France as a dependable different to the USA and China amid financial uncertainty fueled by the 2 international giants’ ongoing trade tariff war.
He may also go to Indonesia and Singapore.
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