 "France's President Emmanuel Macron being pushed in the face reportedly by his wife Brigitte Macron as the couple arrived in Vietnam to begin a tour of Southeast Asia, at Noi Bai International Airport, in Hanoi. Reuters")
Were they just horsing around or did France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron slap husband, Emmanuel Macron, just as they were about to disembark from the plane to start a tour of Southeast Asia?
That’s the question everyone was asking after visuals showed two arms — in red sleeves — reaching out and pushing Macron away with the French president recoiling and turning his head. Then realising he was on camera, he broke into a smile and gave a little wave.
In subsequent visuals, Macron and his wife, wearing a red jacket, appeared at the top of the stairs of the plane. He offers her an arm but she doesn’t take it. They then walk down the carpeted stairs side by side.
The incident quickly became headlines in France with daily newspaper Le Parisien asking — “Slap or squabble?”
The incident has also once again put the spotlight on the French President Emmanuel’s relationship with Brigitte, which began in the most scandalous of manners — she was the teacher of his drama club in school.
As people continue to discuss and debate the latest ‘slapgate’, we take a look at the scandalous relationship between Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron.
When boy met teacher, and they fell in love
It was the year 1993; a 15-year-old Emmanuel Macron had just been admitted to La Providence, a private school founded by devout Jesuits in France’s Amiens. It was here that he first met Mme Auzière (as Brigitte then was), who was the extrovert Latin, French and theatre teacher.
Interestingly, Laurence, the daughter of Brigitte (she was married to a banker then), returned home from school one day raving about the talents of a classmate who was “a crazy boy who knows everything about everything.”
She then met him when the 15-year-old Macron played the lead role in a school play Jacques and his Master, by the deeply philosophical Czech writer Milan Kundera.
The teen then asked the 40-year-old mother of three if she would help rewrite sections of the play The Art of Comedy by Eduardo De Filippo, to expand it to include 15 new roles. And that’s when the love began to bloom. The two met every other Friday to discuss the script and slowly but steadily they became infatuated with each other.
The now French First Lady later admitted, “Little by little, I was won over by his intelligence.”
As rumours began to circulate over their romance, Brigitte then convinced a 17-year-old Emmanuel to go to Paris to finish his schooling. But even as he left, Emmanuel vowed to Brigitte, “Whatever you do, I will marry you!”
And it seems that the 17-year-old held true to his words and in 2007 when he was just 29 years old, he tied the knot with 54-year-old Brigitte in the upmarket town of Le Touquet — the same place where she had married her previous husband 33 years earlier.
Brigitte wore a short white dress. Her three children attended as well as other family members and Emmanuel’s own parents.
“Each and every one of you is a witness to these last 13 years,” said Macron in a toast to his bride and new family. “And you have accepted us. You have made us what we are today … I want to thank you for loving us the way we are, and I want to thank Brigitte’s children because this has not been easy for them.”
Macron’s gay rumours surface
Once married, the couple focused on Emmanuel Macron’s political ambitions. Brigitte quit her job as a teacher and began working as his main consultant when he became finance minister in the government of Francois Hollande in 2014.
She stood firmly by his side when he launched his presidential campaign, weathering all sorts of attacks from the media.
One such attack was that Brigitte was actually a cover-up for Emmanuel, who they claimed was a homosexual. Emmanuel strongly rejected these claims, telling supporters his wife Brigitte “shares my whole life”.
Any reports of a double life were not about him but his “hologram”, he joked.
And in 2017, at age 39, Emmanuel was elected the president of France, becoming the country’s youngest leader ever.
Speaking on the age difference — there’s a 25 year age gap between the two — Brigitte then told Elle France, “There are times in your life where you need to make vital choices. Of course, we have breakfast together, me and my wrinkles, him with his youth, but it’s like that.”
But that’s not all. The relationship suffered another blow when rumours emerged that Brigitte was actually a man , named Jean-Michel, who had transitioned into a woman. However, this claim was found to be totally untrue and the two women who had perpetuated this lie were ordered by the court to pay €8,000 in damages to France’s first lady.
‘Slapgate’ hits Macrons
And with the visuals of French President Emmanuel Macron being apparently shoved in the face on Sunday has once again reignited rumours of discord in the relationship.
However, the French leader has dismissed these as just rumours, insisting that the couple was just joking around and “everyone needs to calm down.”
“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.”
He added that other videos had been misinterpreted, like ones purportedly showing him sharing a bag of cocaine or confronting the Turkish president. “None of these are true,” he said, and “everyone needs to calm down”.
His office issued a similar response, saying “it was a moment of closeness” between the pair. His office’s statement read: “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.”
With inputs from agencies