🔗 Share this article

Recently, Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto thought he was having a confidential discussion with US President Donald Trump during Middle East peace talks in Egypt.

Instead, a live microphone situation captured Prabowo requesting Trump to arrange a call with his son Eric, both of whom hold positions at the family business.

It represented only one in a string of gaffes made by international figures when they assume they're off the record.

Here are several additional memorable errors:

Organ Transplants and Immortality

During a defense ceremony in Beijing this September, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia's head Vladimir Putin were overheard discussing organ transplants as a approach for extending lifespan.

"Human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and you can even achieve immortality," Putin's interpreter was recorded stating.

Xi, who was not visible, responded in Chinese: "Some predict that in this century people may reach 150 years old."

A conversation heard between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin

'Sea Rising at Your Door'

Ex-Australia border protection chief Peter Dutton came under fire in 2015 when he joked about the plight of people in the Pacific facing ocean encroachment.

Dutton was speaking to then-prime minister Tony Abbott, who had just returned from climate change talks with Pacific Island leaders in Port Moresby.

Noting that a meeting about refugees was running on "Cape York time", Abbott replied: "We had a similar situation up in Port Moresby."

Dutton added: "Schedules become irrelevant when you're about to have the ocean reaching your home."

The comments provoked anger from regional nations and climate activists, while the opposition Labor party demanded Dutton to apologise.

Peter Dutton recorded making jokes with Tony Abbott about coastal flooding

'Bigoted Woman'

While serving as UK PM Gordon Brown was campaigning in 2010, he encountered a constituent who questioned him on migration and the economy.

Still wired up to a broadcast microphone when he got into his vehicle, Brown was heard saying: "That was a disaster – they should never have put me with that individual. Who thought of that? Ridiculous."

Asked what she had said, he replied: "All topics, she was just a prejudiced person."

This incident received extensive coverage for weeks and Brown went on to lose the election.

'I Can't Stand Netanyahu. He's a Liar.'

Ex-American leader Barack Obama was in conversation at the international conference in Cannes in 2011 with then French president Nicolas Sarkozy when their remarks about Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu were captured by a live microphone.

Sarkozy said: "I cannot bear Netanyahu. He's a liar."

Per a version from a translator quoted by Reuters, Obama replied: "You're fed up with him but I must work with him more often than you."

'Total ***hole'

A vintage recording incident from then US presidential candidate George W. Bush happened as he made a negative comment about a reporter from The New York Times.

The GOP candidate was didn't realize that a microphone was live when he leaned over to Dick Cheney at a political event and said, "There's Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New York Times."

Cheney responded: "Absolutely, that's true, definitely."

Bush at a Labour rally in 2000