They were just playfighting.
That was French President Emmanuel Macron's explanation for video images that appeared to show his wife, Brigitte, pushing her husband away with both hands on his face before they disembarked from their plane to start a tour of Southeast Asia.
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.
The headline of a story on the website of the daily Le Parisien newspaper asked: "Slap or 'squabble'? The images of Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron disembarking in Vietnam trigger a lot of comment."
Macron later told reporters the couple — married since 2007 after meeting at the high school where he was a student and she was a teacher — were simply joking around.
Video captured the moment France President Emmanuel Macron was pushed away by his wife. Source: AP / Hau Dinh
In a video taken by the Associated Press as the couple arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday, a uniformed man can be seen pulling open the plane door and revealing Macron standing inside, dressed in a suit and talking to someone who wasn't visible.
Two arms — in red sleeves — reached out and pushed Macron away, with one hand covering his mouth and part of his nose while the other was on his jaw. Macron recoiled, turning his head away. Then, apparently realising that he was on camera, he broke into a smile and gave a little wave.
The video has been widely circulated online.
Plane incident not the first viral video of Macron
This is the third time this month that Macron has been the subject of viral video footage at a time when France says it is being targeted by repeated disinformation campaigns as Russia steps up attacks on Ukraine.
It was falsely claimed Macron took cocaine on a trip to Kyiv alongside United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and images also emerged purporting to show Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dominating the French leader in a handshake.
Macron said the content of videos of him had been twisted by people he described as "crackpots".
He referred to the other incidents, including the images shot on the train to Kyiv, where some accounts falsely claimed he shared cocaine. But the object Macron removed from the table when the media entered was a tissue.
Erdogan, meanwhile, was filmed holding Macron's finger at a summit.
Russia's foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova actively promoted the cocaine disinformation earlier this month. Source: EPA / Yuri Kochetkov
"Everyone needs to calm down."
Macron's office initially denied the authenticity of the images, evoking the possible use of artificial intelligence, before they were confirmed as genuine.
"In these three videos, I took a tissue, shook someone's hand and just joked with my wife, as we do quite often. Nothing more," Macron said.
He blamed manipulations on "networks that are quite well-traceable", specifically pointing the finger at "the Russians" and "the extremists in France".
He emphasised that all three videos were "completely authentic" but the meanings attached to them were not.
Russia's foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, who had actively promoted the cocaine disinformation earlier this month, wrote on Telegram that Macron had received "a right hook from his wife".
She said Macron's advisers would try to explain away the gesture by blaming Russia. "Maybe it was the 'hand of the Kremlin'?" she said.
Macron's office also downplayed the interaction.
"It was a moment where the president and his wife were decompressing one last time before the start of the trip by horsing around. It's a moment of complicity. It was all that was needed to give ammunition to the conspiracy theorists."
