French President Emmanuel Macron’s press team originally claimed that a video of the country’s First Lady Brigitte Macron slapping her husband was a Russian plot, according to initial reports.
“At the beginning, the Elysee [Palace] denied the truth of the images, suggesting a video generated by AI and relayed by pro-Russian accounts before finally authenticating the sequence which [they said] evoked a moment of ‘complicity,’” said news outlet Breves de Presse in a post on X Monday.
Officials later walked back the comments after the Associated Press authenticated the footage, which shows Brigitte slapping her husband’s face as they prepared to disembark from their plane in Hanoi Sunday.
Blaming the Kremlin for most things that go wrong in France has become a national pastime, according to one observer. Jean-Noel Barrot, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France, blamed Russia for an outbreak of bedbugs in the months before Paris was set to host 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.
Brigitte, 72, is 25 years older than her husband, whom she met when she was his drama and literature teacher in high school in the city of Amiens in northern France. Brigitte Auziere, as she was known at the time, 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 Mum with her boy, if you see what I mean.”
For Carole Raphaelle Davis, an actor and writer, who spends time between Los Angeles and Nice, the slap incident — known in France as “la gifle” — was 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,’” said Davis. “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.”
Maelle Brun, the author of a biography about Brigitte, has said the first lady has long acted as a guiding force for her ambitious husband. “Her role remains constant: to inspire, to counsel as she did on the school benches of La Providence school,” she wrote in her book, “Brigitte Macron: An Unfettered Woman”
“Before she put him on the path, Macron said he lived ‘an immobile life’ there,” Brun wrote.
