Bizarre footage has emerged of French President Emmanuel Macron appearing to be pushed in the face by his wife Brigitte while the couple were “squabbling” as they arrived in Vietnam for a tour in Southeast Asia. The couple were preparing to disembark from the presidential plane at Hanoi Airport when Brigitte‘s hand is seen pushing the President’s face away, before he notices he’s on camera.
Mr Macron, 47, then awkwardly smiles and waves to the press waiting outside, and he and Ms Macron, 72, descend the stairs together, but not arm in arm as they often are. According to French media, the Elysee Palace initially denied the authenticity of images, which were captured on an Associated Press live feed, before later verifying they were real.
However, an anonymous official close to the French leader insisted the pair, who have been married almost 20 years, were merely “squabbling”.
Speaking to the Le Figaro newspaper, they said: “It was a moment when the president and his wife were relaxing one last time before the start of the trip by having a laugh.”
Mr Macron later told reporters: “We are horsing around and, really, joking with my wife,” suggesting that too much had been made of it: “It becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.”
President Macron was reportedly around 15 when he met Brigitte, a teacher at his private school in Amiens. Brigitte, more than 25 years his senior, was then a married mother of three with a daughter the same age.
In an interview with Elle France in 2017, Brigitte opened up about the bond they developed while working on a play together at a school in Amiens.
Brigitte told the magazine: “In that theatre workshop we wrote plays together – our relationship was one of artistic equality. It was when we worked on the Eduardo De Filippo play ‘The Art of Comedy’.
“We wrote together on Friday nights – and by Saturday, I couldn’t wait for Friday to come around. I didn’t understand why. It seemed insane.”
The First Lady claimed that after local rumours surfaced of her and Mr Macron’s love affair, she encouraged him to focus on his education.
She said: “I was the one who insisted that Emmanuel go to Paris to finish his schooling. There was nothing between us at that time, but the spiteful gossip was already making the rounds.
“My only concern was my children, Sébastien, Laurence, and Tiphaine. Not the rest of the world.” There is no suggestion that anything illegal took place while Mr Macron was underage.
The couple eventually tied the knot in 2007 when Mr Macron was in his late 20s, the year after Brigitte divorced her estranged husband André-Louis Auzière. Ten years later, Macron, who made a fortune in finance before launching his political career, became President of France.
While the pair don’t have any children together, Mr Macron is stepfather to Brigitte’s seven grandchildren, and they share a black Labrador Retriever-Griffon dog called Nemo.
