LONDON — French President Emmanuel Macron played down an apparent spat with his wife Brigitte, after a video emerged of what appeared to be the French first lady shoving her husband in the face after they arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, for an official visit. The video showed Macron appearing inside the door of his aircraft shortly after touching down in the northern Vietnamese city late on Sunday. A hand and arm — with the person not fully visible but dressed in red — could then be seen appearing to shove the president’s face from his right hand side.
Macron appeared startled but quickly turned to wave through the open door. Brigitte — wearing a red jacket — then appeared from the president’s right, with the couple then walking down the plane’s staircase together to the tarmac.
“We are bickering and joking with my wife and a video becomes a sort of geoplanetary catastrophe,” Macron told reporters on Monday. “In the world we live in, we don’t have a lot of time to lose” on discussing such topics, he added. Speaking on France’s BFMTV television channel, Macron denied any “domestic scene,” adding, “This is all a bit of nonsense.” Macron is in Vietnam as part of a Southeast Asia tour. He will also visit Indonesia and Singapore.
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti and Hugo Leenhardt contributed to this report.
