Update: French President Emmanuel Macron Reacts To Video Of His Wife Slapping Him

French President Emmanuel Macron has reacted after a video surfaced online showing his angry wife slapping his face.

The video, shot by an Associated Press camera operator, shows the French president appearing in the doorway of the plane at the start of a visit to Hanoi.

His wife’s hand appears to shove him, causing him to step back before recovering and waving.

Brigitte Macron’s body is not visible, and her husband told reporters afterwards the gesture was playful.

But the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, seized on the footage, writing on Telegram that the president had received “a right hook”.

“Did the first lady decide to cheer up her husband with a gentle pat on the cheek and miscalculate her strength?” she asked in a mocking post.

“Did she want to fix his collar, but ended up reaching the beloved face?” Zakharova added, after the Russia Today TV channel and associated social media accounts had repeatedly aired the clip.

“Here’s a hint: maybe it was the ‘hand of the Kremlin’.”

Macron told reporters in Hanoi he and his wife were “joking around, as we do quite often”.

An Élysée Palace official told French media the scene showed “a moment of closeness. But that was enough to feed the conspiracy theorists.”

Another Elysée source said the couple were “decompressing one last time before the start of the visit, larking around”.

Macron “loves playing jokes on his wife before official occasions, and she always responds like this … It wasn’t even a slap.”

Macron noted that other videos of him had been misinterpreted.

People “have thought I shared a bag of cocaine, tussled with the Turkish president, now that I’m having a domestic dispute with my wife … None of this is true. Everyone needs to calm down,” he said.