At a Friday press conference in the Oval Office, U.S. President Donald Trump weighed in on a viral video of French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, that had fueled mass online speculation.
The video has been taken as the couple stepped off a plane in Vietnam, where Brigitte is seen jokingly pushing Macron's face.
When questioned regarding the incident at a joint press event with Elon Musk, Trump explained that he had already talked with Macron and assured journalists that "they're fine."
"They're two wonderful people I know very well, and I don't know what that was all about," Trump further added.
In a flippant response to a query on "world leader to world leader marital advice," Trump wisecracked, "Make sure the door stays closed," eliciting laughter from the attendees.
The video went viral on social media, greeted with initial denials from the Élysée Palace, which dubbed the video as phony. They later, however, admitted its authenticity and stated that it was just a private, jokey moment.
Macron himself intervened, explaining, "We are horsing around and, really, joking with my wife. It becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe."
The French President and Brigitte, who began their relationship when he was a student and she was his teacher, characterized the incident as "a moment of complicity" seized upon by conspiracy theorists.
Macron's office had already given a similar explanation, saying:
"It was a moment where the President and his wife were unwinding one last time prior to the trip beginning by horsing around. It's a moment of complicity. It was all that was required to provide fuel for the conspiracy theorists."
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