News Outlets Share Old Report of French President Emmanuel Macron Being Slapped

An old video of French President Emmanuel Macron being slapped is being shared online as recent. BOOM found that the original video is from 8 June 2021, when Macron was slapped during his visit to the southeast region of France.

The dated video was first shared in India by news agency ANI with the caption, "French President Emmanuel Macron slapped again, video goes viral"

ANI then issued a correction for this story on Twitter and wrote, "Correction | This story has been retracted, the viral video is an old video which was circulated again. Error regretted."

Before ANI's retraction, outlets like Hindustan Times (archive here), Times Now (archive here), Amar Ujala (archive here), TV9 Bharatvarsh (archive here), Zee News (archive here), and The Print (archive here), too, shared this story as recent.

BOOM found that the post first went viral on 20 November after a few accounts started sharing the video again.

The post is captioned as, "Macron as popular as ever.🤡"

Click here for the archive.

Another post with the caption "Emmanuel Macron got slapped up again," was shared.

Click here for the archive.

FACT-CHECK

BOOM ran a keyword search with "President Emmanuel Macron slapped," and found reports by the BBC and CNN from 8 June, 2021. The reports include the same video that has been shared recently.

The reports explain how Macron was on official duty during his visit to Tain-l'Hermitage, near Valence in France. A man in a green t-shirt then proceeded to slap him while shouting, ""Down with Macronie."

Macron has been attacked several times in the past as well. According to Associated Press, he was egged in Paris while he was still a presidential candidate in March 2017. This video was revived again in 2020 with false claims, read our fact-check here. In September 2021, he was hit by an egg in Lyon and in the most recent incident in April 2022, he was pelted with cherry tomatoes while talking to a small crowd in Cergy.