Macron has been slapped in the face in more ways than one

Whatever happened between the French president and his wife on their trip to Vietnam, it completely overshadowed the politics of the visit

French President Emmanuel Macron went to Vietnam to ink some massive deals – like a €9 billion Airbus order, which was supposed to be the centerpiece of the trip.

But before he could even set foot on Vietnamese soil, as the plane’s hatch opened, his wife Brigitte was caught on camera doing what can only be described as a vertical push-up right on Macron’s face.

At first glance, it looked like perhaps she was just trying to set the vibe for the visit, with a reenactment of what happened to the French the last time they got a little too confident in Vietnam. In any case, suddenly this image of the presidential couple had everyone zooming in like it was a lost Da Vinci.

Cue the Elysee’s damage control. First: It’s a deepfake. Then: The Russians did it. And finally: Okay fine, it’s real, but it’s just two people “decompressing.” Let the one among us who’s never “unwound” by shoving our spouse in the face cast the first baguette.

Final answer? Apparently so. A moment of complicity between longtime partners. Like a secret handshake. To the face. By the way, do the Elysee flaks themselves also count as conspiracy theorists? They’re the ones who cycled through every possible scapegoat short of blaming climate change – until they realized the Americans had the raw footage too.

Read more

Of course this slapstick moment didn’t make it into the glossy PR reel, which also featured Macron and his wife descending from the presidential plane. He appeared to gallantly offer her an arm as they deplaned – which she promptly ignored. His other hand formed a fist. For whom? Who knows. But France should probably duck.

“France is a power of peace and balance,” Macron wrote above the promotional video on X. it would have been a hard sell posting that directly above a video that starts with him catching a couple of “peaceful” palms straight to the jaw.

“When some choose to withdraw, France chooses to build bridges,” he added. Sure, but it kind of looked like you withdrew to the other side of the cabin, my guy.

Weird? Well, maybe to the peasants. But apparently, it’s completely normal for the presidential couple to throw hands whenever someone cracks a joke. “It’s not even a slap…it’s a gesture that mimics a punch in the face. We’ve seen this sketch 100 times, it’s their way of decompressing before official performances,” explained a source described by Le Parisien as “close to” Macron. So, their opening act for a show of diplomacy on the world stage is something that looks like it was cribbed from a Three Stooges sketch? Alrighty then.

In instances where you and I may laugh, these two just go full Rocky and Adrian, minus the gloves. You know they do have gloves though. We’ve already seen them used for Macron’s boxing photo shoots. The ones that absolutely are not meant to show how he’s going to personally fight Russian President Vladimir Putin. That is, if he ever gets past Brigitte in round one.

Read more

Macron later expressed frustration with everyone trying to decode what he insists is totally standard behavior. “We are teasing each other and having a bit of fun with my wife. I am surprised by this. It becomes a kind of... geoplanetary catastrophe where some are even developing theories, and I see a lot of crazy people spending their day explaining all these interpretations in videos,” Macron explained. “There are people who watched videos and think that I shared a bag of cocaine, that I had a one-on-one with the Turkish president, and that right now, I am in the process of having a quarrel with my wife. None of this is true, yet these three videos are real.”

Oh, yeah – the napkin on the train to Ukraine that some folks mistook for a bag of cocaine. Maybe because Macron’s face looked a bit red as he snatched it up when the media walked in. Almost forgot about that one. Thanks for the reminder. Indeed, who hasn’t casually left a used Kleenex just sitting in the middle of the table with other folks. It’s a wonder that no one has yet speculated that Brigitte wasn’t just trying to give Macron one last hit of Kleenex before he stepped out of the plane. One for the road, as it were.

As for the “one-on-one” with Erdogan? That’s a stretch. Macron’s flattering himself. It was more of a one-on-none. Erdogan held Macron’s finger like he was selecting a baguette from a Parisian bakery. If dignity were Kleenex, Macron would have struggled to blow his nose on what was left – let alone use it for his next Kleenex Rorschach Test.

Yes, Macron technically came to Vietnam to ink major defense and aerospace deals in a power move to reassert France’s relevance in the Indo-Pacific, counterbalance China, and show that France can still punch above its weight (even without Brigitte’s spontaneous contribution). But between the bungled PR, the conspiracy fodder, and Erdogan’s diplomatic wedgie, it’s hard to tell if Macron’s trips are actual diplomacy – or rather just episodes of reality TV with an unlimited travel budget.