Emmanuel Macron has dismissed rumors of a marital dispute after a viral video showed his wife swatting his face.

French President Emmanuel Macron has shut down rumours about a dispute with his wife after a video showing her swatting his face went viral on social media. The French leader and his wife, Bridgitte, arrived in Vietnam for an official visit and were about to deplane when cameras captured Macron getting shoved away by his wife, making him lose his composure.

The moment quickly went viral online, sparking a wave of speculation and conspiracy theories about possible trouble in the couple’s relationship.

‘Joking, teasing my wife’

As people across the internet continued to question the video, Macron himself told reporters that the couple were just joking around.

“There’s a video showing me joking and teasing my wife, and somehow that becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe, with people even coming up with theories to explain it. For three weeks, there are people who have watched videos and think I shared a bag of cocaine, that I had a fight with the Turkish president, and that now I’m having a domestic dispute with my wife. None of these are true. Everyone needs to calm down,” he added.

At first, his office had dismissed the video as manipulated but once news agencies confirmed it was authentic, they continued to downplay the incident. “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.

The viral video

The viral clip was recorded moments after the French President’s plane touched down in Hanoi and the doors to the aircraft were opened, revealing Macron standing at the gate. He walks to the right to talk to someone, when Bridgitte’s hand is seen shoving his face away. Taken aback and aware of the cameras recording him, the leader quickly composed himself and waved at them. Moments later, Macron and his wife walked down from the plane without holding hands.