LONDON — Behold the power of the humble hot mic. The magnifier of sound, a descendant of 150-year-old technology, on Monday added to its long history of cutting through the most scripted political spectacles when it captured more than two minutes of U.S. President Donald Trump and eight European leaders chit-chatting around a White House news conference on their talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. The standout quote came from Trump himself to French President Emmanuel Macron even before anyone sat down. The American president, reflecting his comments after meeting in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin: “I think he wants to make a deal for me, you understand, as crazy as it sounds.”
How politics and diplomacy sound when the principals think no one is listening can reveal much about the character, humor and humanity of our leaders — for better and sometimes for worse. As public figures, they’ve long known what the rest of us are increasingly learning in the age of CCTV, Coldplay kiss cams and social media: In public, no one can realistically expect privacy.
“Whenever I hear about a hot mic moment, my first reaction is that this is what they really think, that it’s not gone through the external communications filter,” said Bill McGowan, founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group in New York. “That’s why people love it so much: There is nothing more authentic than what people say on a hot mic.”
Always assume the microphone — or camera — is turned on
Hot mics, often leavened with video, have bedeviled aspiring and actual leaders long before social media. During a sound check for his weekly radio address in 1984, U.S. President Ronald Reagan famously joked about attacking the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.
“My fellow Americans,” Reagan quipped, not realizing the practice run was being recorded. “I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” The Soviet Union didn’t find it funny and condemned it given the consequential subject at hand.
Putin, too, has fallen prey to the perils of a live mic. In 2006, he was quoted in Russian media joking about Israel’s president, who had been charged with and later was convicted of rape. The Kremlin said Putin was not joking about rape and his meaning had been lost in translation.
Sometimes a hot mic moment involves no words at all. Presidential candidate Al Gore was widely parodied for issuing exasperated and very audible sighs during his debate with George W. Bush in 2000. In others, the words uttered for all to hear are profane.
Bush was caught telling running mate Dick Cheney that a reporter for The New York Times was a “major-league a–hole.”
“This is a big f———- deal,” then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden famously said, loudly enough to be picked up on a microphone, as President Barack Obama prepared to sign his signature Affordable Care Act in 2010.
Obama was caught on camera in South Korea telling Dmitri Medvedev, then the Russian president, that he’ll have “more flexibility” to resolve sensitive issues — “particularly with missile defense” — after the 2012 presidential election, his last. Republican Mitt Romney, Obama’s rival that year, called the exchange “bowing to the Kremlin.”
“Sometimes it’s the unguarded moments that are the most revealing of all,” Romney said in a statement, dubbing the incident “hot mic diplomacy.”
Live mics have picked up name-calling and gossip aplenty even in the most mannerly circles.
In 2022, Jacinda Ardern, then New Zealand’s prime minister, known for her skill at debating and calm, measured responses, was caught on a hot mic tossing an aside in which she referred to a rival politician as “such an arrogant pr—-” during Parliament Question Time.
In 2005, Jacques Chirac, then president of France, was recorded airing his distaste for British food during a visit to Russia. Speaking to Putin and Gerhard Schroder, he was heard saying that worse food could only be found in Finland, according to widely reported accounts.
Britain’s King Charles III chose to deal with his hot mic moment with humor. In 2022, shortly after his coronation, Charles lost his patience with a leaky pen while signing a document on a live feed. He can be heard grousing: “Oh, God, I hate this!” and muttering, “I can’t bear this bloody thing … every stinking time.”
It wasn’t the first pen that had troubled him. The British ability to poke fun at oneself, he said in a speech the next year, is well known: “Just as well, you may say, given some of the vicissitudes I have faced with frustratingly failing fountain pens this past year.”
Trump owns perhaps the ultimate hot mic moment
The American president is famously uncontrolled in public with a penchant for “saying it like it is,” sometimes with profanity. That makes him popular among some supporters.
But even he had trouble putting a lid on comments he made before he was a candidate to “Access Hollywood” in tapes that jeopardized his campaign in the final stretch of the 2016 presidential race. Trump did not appear to know the microphone was recording.
Trump bragged about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women who were not his wife on recordings obtained by The Washington Post and NBC News and aired just two days before his debate with Hillary Clinton. The celebrity businessman boasted “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” in a conversation with Billy Bush, then a host of the television show.
With major supporters balking, Trump issued an apology “if anyone was offended,” and his campaign dismissed the comments as “locker room banter.”
On Monday, though, the chatter on both ends of the East Room press conference gave observers a glimpse of the diplomatic game.
Dismissed unceremoniously from the White House in March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy now sat at the table with Trump and seven of his European peers: Macron, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump complimented Macron’s tan. He said Stubb is a good golfer. He asked if anyone wanted to ask the press questions when the White House pool was admitted to the room — before it galloped inside. The European leaders smiled at the shouting and shuffling.
