On June 11, 2024, as the three-day 2024 NATO summit in Washington D.C. drew to a close, an image of First Lady Jill Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron appearing to hold hands while posing for a photo went viral.
On Reddit, one post received more than 17,000 upvotes and 2,400 comments, as of this writing. Many of the comments under the post implied, jokingly for the most part, that some sort of romantic hanky-panky was going on.
(The Telegraph/Reddit)
The photo is indeed authentic, meaning that it was not photoshopped or otherwise digitally altered.
It is available on Getty Images, credited to Bloomberg and captioned as follows:
President Biden And First Lady Host NATO Allies And Partners At White House
Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), from left, US President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, Emmanuel Macron, France's president, and Gitanas Nauseda, Lithuania's president, during an arrival ceremony at the South Portico of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, July 10, 2024. NATO leaders, who are meeting for a three-day NATO summit in Washington, will send five long-range air-defense systems for Ukraine, after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked for more help in the wake of stepped-up Russian strikes on his country. Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Telegraph, another outlet, also published a story about the photo. "The French president is known for putting on warm displays with world leaders," the subhead of the article read.