Emmanuel Macron’s wife ‘slaps him’ during clash on official tour

French president Emmanuel Macron’s wife Brigitte Macron appears to slap her husband in footage shared on social media

Shocking footage appears to show the moment Emmanuel Macron’s wife ‘slaps’ her husband during a heated exchange on an official visit.

The video from Hanoi airport in Vietnam on Sunday evening (May 25) shows Macron through the aircraft door, when suddenly his wife Brigitte swiftly raises her hand towards his face, appearing to hit him.

The French leader looks taken aback and turns to wave outside, before the couple descend the aircraft’s stairs, where Macron tries to take her hand as they walk – but she chooses to hold the stairway’s railing instead.

A source close to Macron downplayed the event as “bickering” to BFMTV, reports the Mirror.

They commented: “It was a moment for the President and his wife to unwind one last time before the start of the trip by having a little fun.”

Macron later reporters that the couple, who have been married since 2007, were simply joking around.

“We are horsing around and, really, joking with my wife,” he said, adding that the incident was being overblown: “It becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.”

His office earlier offered a similar explanation.

“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,” his office said.

Macron and his wife arrived in Hanoi on Sunday night to commence a week-long Southeast Asia tour, with planned visits to Indonesia and Singapore.

Macron is set to meet with Vietnamese president Luong Cuong and Communist Party Secretary-General To Lam today.

Following their arrival, he took to social media to say: “The major challenges of the century… can only be met in cooperation with our partners.

“I’ve come here to strengthen our ties in key areas: defence, innovation, energy transition and cultural exchanges. Everywhere I go, I’ll be saying one simple thing: France is a power of peace and balance.”

The French President is set to make a state visit to the UK in July.

Macron will be staying at Windsor Castle during his visit, which is scheduled from July 8 to July 10, as confirmed by Buckingham Palace earlier this month.

This means Macron is likely to arrive in London before Donald Trump.

An invitation for an unprecedented second state visit to Britain was extended to the White House back in February, but no date has been finalised yet.

King Charles and Queen Camilla made a historic trip to France in September 2023, with Charles becoming the first British monarch to address the French Senate.