French President Emmanuel Macron’s press team initially dismissed a video showing First Lady Brigitte Macron slapping her husband as a Russian disinformation plot, according to early reports.
“At first, the Élysée Palace denied the authenticity of the footage, suggesting it was an AI-generated video circulated by pro-Russian accounts, before eventually confirming the clip, which they described as capturing a moment of ‘complicity,’” reported news outlet Brèves de Presse in a post on X Monday.
Officials later retracted their initial statements after the Associated Press verified the footage, which shows Brigitte Macron slapping her husband’s face as they prepared to disembark from their plane in Hanoi on Sunday.
Blaming the Kremlin for many of France’s problems has become something of a national pastime, according to one observer. For example, Jean-Noël Barrot, France’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, blamed Russia for a bedbug outbreak in the months leading up to Paris hosting the Olympic Games last year.
But French observers told The Post that Brigitte’s slap had nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with keeping her much younger husband in line.
French officials initially blamed a video showing Brigitte Macron shoving her husband on a plane on Russian disinformation.
Brigitte, 72, is 25 years older than her husband, whom she met when she was his drama and literature teacher at a high school in Amiens, northern France. Known then as Brigitte Auzière, she was a married mother of three when she fell in love with her 15-year-old student. Macron is now 47.
“Honestly, I don’t think they have a bad relationship,” said one Parisian source. “It’s just a mum with her boy, if you know what I mean.”
For Carole Raphaëlle Davis, an actor and writer who divides her time between Los Angeles and Nice, the slap incident—known in France as “la gifle”—offered a very public glimpse into a private moment in the first couple’s marriage. They have been married since 2007.
“Brigitte Macron was full-on James Cagney in Public Enemy,” Davis said. “This is a powerful woman slapping—no, b–ch-smacking—a man who sometimes behaves like a little king. It’s wrong, but it’s riveting… For French women, left, right, and center, she smacked all men who push our limits.”
Brigitte Auzière was a married mother of three when she met 15-year-old Emmanuel Macron.
Maëlle Brun, author of a biography on Brigitte Macron, has said the first lady has long served as a guiding force for her ambitious husband. “Her role remains constant: to inspire and to counsel, just as she did on the school benches of La Providence,” she wrote in her book, Brigitte Macron: An Unfettered Woman.
“Before she set him on this path, Macron said he lived ‘an immobile life’ there,” Brun added.
