What did French first lady Brigitte Macron say when she gave a robust slap to President Emmanuel Macron? After the release of a video that went viral, the French president himself intervened to explain that “it was not a fight” but “we were simply joking, as often happens.” Now a lip-reading expert seems to support the hypothesis that there was tension between the two on board the plane that took them to Hanoi, Vietnam, the first stop on their Southeast Asian tour.
Contacted by British tabloid Daily Express, the lip-reading analyst explained what the couple said to each other in the moments following the gesture. When both were at the top of the airplane stairs, Brigitte ignored the arm offered by her husband and as she passed him would have whispered, “Dégage, espêce de loser,” that is “Stay away, loser!”
The president seems to reply: “Essayons, s’il te plaît” (“Let’s try, please”). To that question, Brigitte would have replied with a dry “No.” According to the expert, the exchange between husband and wife ended with a “Je vois” (“I understand”) from the president.
Yesterday, when the images went viral, Emmanuel Macron’s office first spoke of “a harmless quarrel” between the couple, then of “a moment of complicity” between the president and his wife: “They were joking, they were relaxing one last time before the start of the tour.”
In the video, you can see two hands taking Macron’s face and pushing him away. The first lady is not in frame, and you can only see hands and two red sleeves, as red was the jacket worn by Brigitte. The video that captured the couple when the airplane door opened shows the French president frown after being rejected, take a step back, and then hurry to greet the people meeting him, once he realizes he is in the spotlight. Brigitte Macron then followed him out of the plane.
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