Macron team in chaos over Brigitte ‘shove'

Emmanuel Macron's communications team is in disarray over the Brigitte 'shove', with splits reportedly emerging on how to handle the furore over viral footage of France's first couple in an apparent marital dispute in Vietnam.
The video in question showed Mrs Macron raising her hand and pushing her husband's face moments before they stepped off their presidential jet to be greeted by delegates in Hanoi on Sunday evening.
With online reaction snowballing, the Elysée initially suggested that it was fake, AI-generated footage.
In a sharp reversal, it later admitted that the images were real, but that claims France's First Couple were having some kind of dispute were wide of the mark.
'It was a moment when the president and his wife were relaxing one last time before the start of the trip by having a laugh. It was a moment of closeness,' said an Elysée aide.
The panicked reaction – and u-turn – reflected simmering 'tensions within the Elysée's communications unit' according to state radio channel France Info.
One Macron ally told the channel that the Élysée 'ballsed up' by first talking about fake images.
Credit: Reuters
Another insisted that they had to act quickly: 'When they don't, it turns into the conspiracy theory sphere, we're in a world where there's a need for clarity so as not to let crazy stuff flourish.'
France Info said Elysée spin doctors were struggling to set the right tone. 'On its social networks, the Élysée almost presents itself as a news fact-checking unit, issuing one denial after another,' it said.
Philippe Guibert, a commentator on Europe1 radio, said that whatever really happened behind the scenes, the reaction smacked of a 'very, very poor communication exercise'.
'The best thing would have been to say nothing and wait for it to die down because it's ridiculous compared to current world events.'
Fellow commentator Jean-Claude Dassier also bemoaned a 'catastrophic' PR reaction over what for him was 'clearly a row' but not an affair of state.
'Why haven't we heard from Brigitte? For once, it would have been useful to have her plain and simple explanation.'
Paris Match, the weekly glossy magazine, leapt to the Macrons' aid with a fawning photo story showing France's first couple looking radiant and entitled: 'Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron forget the row and get their smile back at a state dinner in Vietnam.'
'Their faces betrayed nothing of the controversy raging in the French media and on social networks,' it wrote.
'Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron were all smiles and relaxed as they attended the state dinner hosted by Vietnamese president Luong Cuong and his wife Nguyen Thi Minh Nguyet on Monday evening as part of the couple's official visit to the country.'
On Tuesday, the couple was seen arm in arm as the president arrived at Hanoi's University of Science and Technology to deliver a speech.
On Monday night, Mr Macron blasted 'crackpot' conspiracy theorists for seeking to intensify speculation around the state of his marriage.
He pointed out that he had recently been falsely accused of taking cocaine with Sir Keir Starmer and Germany's chancellor Friedrich Merz, and of having a physical altercation with Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who held onto his finger.
'My wife and I were squabbling, we were rather joking, and I was taken by surprise,' Mr Macron told reporters.
Now it has 'become a kind of planetary catastrophe, and some are even coming up with theories', he added.
'For three weeks, there have been people who have watched videos and who think that I shared a bag of cocaine, that I had a mano-a-mano with a Turkish president and now that I am having a domestic dispute with my wife.
'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,' he went on.
'None of this is true… so everyone needs to calm down.'
Meanwhile, Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who had actively promoted the cocaine disinformation earlier this month, wrote on Telegram that Mr Macron had received 'a right hook from his wife'.
She said Mr Macron's advisers would try to explain away the gesture by blaming Russia. She quipped: 'Maybe it was the 'hand of the Kremlin?''
Mr Macron's visit to Vietnam, the first by a French president in almost a decade, comes as he aims to boost France's influence in south-east Asia and position the country as a 'third way' between the US and China.

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