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Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto thought he was having a private word with US president Donald Trump at the Gaza peace summit in Egypt this week.
Instead what unfolded was a hot-mic slip up, with Prabowo heard asking Trump to line up a call with his son Eric, or his son Don Jr, who both serve as executives at the Trump organisation.
It was just one of a series of gaffes made by world leaders when they think no one can hear them.
Here are five other noteworthy blunders:
Organ transplants and immortality
At a military parade in Beijing this September, Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin were caught on tape discussing organ transplants as a means of prolonging life.
“Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and [you can] even achieve immortality,” Putin’s interpreter is heard saying of what appeared to be a private conversation.
Xi, who was off camera, could be heard responding in Chinese: “Some predict that in this century humans may live to 150 years old.”
‘Water lapping at your door’
Former Australian immigration minster Peter Dutton came under fire in 2015 when he joked about the plight of people in the Pacific facing rising sea levels. Dutton was speaking to the then-prime minister Tony Abbott, who has just returned from talks on climate change with Pacific Island leaders in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
Noting that a meeting about refugees was running on “Cape York time,” – meaning that it running late – the Australian leader replied: “we had a bit of that up in Port Moresby”, to which Dutton added: “time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to have water lapping at your door”.
The comments sparked outrage from the Pacific Islands and environmentalists, while the opposition Labor party called for Dutton to apologise. Larissa Waters, deputy leader of the Greens at the time, wondered: “What else are these clowns saying when the microphones are off?”
‘Bigoted Woman’
As Labour prime minister Gordon Brown took a spin on the campaign trail in 2010 he was faced with a voter who challenged him on immigration and the economy. Still wired up to a Sky news microphone when he entered the car Brown is heard saying: “That was a disaster – they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? Ridiculous.” Asked what she had said, he replied: “Everything, she was just a bigoted woman.”
The scandal dominated headlines for weeks and Brown went on to lose the election.
‘I cannot bear Netanyahu. He’s a liar.’
Former US president Barack Obama was in discussion at the G20 summit in Cannes in 2011 with then French president Nicolas Sarkozy when their comments on Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu were picked up by a live microphone.
Sarkozy said: “I cannot bear Netanyahu. He’s a liar.” According to a version from a French interpreter quoted by Reuters, Obama replied: “You’re fed up with him but I have to deal with him more often than you.”
‘Major league ***hole’
A vintage hot-mic moment from then US presidential candidate George W Bush who made a disparaging remark about a reporter from The New York Times.
The Republican presidential nominee was unaware that a microphone was live when he leaned over to Dick Cheney at a Labor Day rally and said, “There’s Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New York Times.”
Cheney responded: “Oh yeah, he is, big time.”
