It seems like every press conference is similar to a hot mic stream of consciousness. In a presser on the American-Iranian ceasefire, Trump bragged that he personally dropped all the bombs that led to an Iranian capitulation, claiming credit for ‘kicking Iran’s ass.’
By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 22, 2026.
OTTAWA—The hot mics in France last week were not that hot.
What they showed was our prime minister making best use of his time to convince United States President Donald Trump to sign onto the trilateral trade agreement set to expire July 1.
A real hot mic usually involves scandal. Someone says something that puts someone else in a bad light, and heads roll.
Perhaps one of the most famous was a hot mic incident at a NATO meeting in Prague in 2002, where the prime minister’s communications director Françoise Ducros was overheard calling then-U.S. president George W. Bush “a moron.”
Journalist Bob Fife heard the remark and immediately reported it. All hell broke loose. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien refused to fire Ducros, and simply repeated that he was good friends with the president and did not think he was a moron.
But the pressure was too great and Ducros eventually offered her resignation, saying it was impossible for her to do her job because of the controversy.
Another “hot mic” story wasn’t exactly a hot mic. It was a hot seat on an Air Canada flight between Ottawa and New Brunswick in 1998. Then solicitor-general Andy Scott was chatting with his seatmate about the circumstances surrounding the use of police pepper spray on protesters at a meeting of the leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation.
Canada hosted the 1997 meeting, and Chrétien defended the use of pepper spray with the famous comment, “For me, I put it (pepper) on my plate.”
A public inquiry was held the following year into the whole affair, but during the infamous plane ride, the solicitor-general told his seat-mate that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would take the fall for the spray.
Little did Scott know that New Democratic Party MP Dick Proctor, a former sports reporter, was sitting right near him, and transcribing the whole conversation.
When the contents were released in the House of Commons, Scott was forced to resign from his post. After his resignation, whenever I was in conversation with someone in a public place, and voices got louder, I would simply make a plea for silence by saying ‘A.S.’ That immediately reduced the volume on any discussion.
The third, relatively famous hot mike conversation was again, not on a mic.
Instead, a former Conservative minister in the government of Stephen Harper accidently left a tape recorder in the office of a radio station which ended up hitting the national news. As natural resources minister, Lisa Raitt was responsible for the production of nuclear isotopes at the government lab in Chalk River, Ont. At the time, there were radioactive leaks at the lab, for which Raitt believed she had a solution.
In the tape, she claimed it was a good issue because “it’s sexy … radioactive leaks. Cancer,” and she said she would score political credit for fixing it.
When the recording was exposed, a tearful Raitt offered her resignation, but it was turned down by the prime minister. Instead, she was demoted in the next cabinet shuffle.
A more recent Canadian hot mic incident was experienced by then-prime minister Justin Trudeau during a NATO anniversary celebration at Buckingham Palace.
In a conversation with several leaders, including Britain’s Boris Johnson, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte and Princess Anne, Trudeau generated a chuckle when he commented on why Trump was late to the celebration, saying, “He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top. … You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor.”
Trump countered with his own hot mic experience. After publicly calling Trudeau “two-faced,” he went on to privately say this own attack on Trudeau was funny.
These days, Trump doesn’t need a hot mic. It seems like every press conference is similar to a hot mic stream of consciousness. In a presser on the American-Iranian ceasefire, Trump bragged that he personally dropped all the bombs that led to an Iranian capitulation, claiming credit for “kicking Iran’s ass.”
Trump has repeatedly promised that the United States would never sign an agreement to send money to rebuild Iran, but the agreement calls for a $300-billion reparation package for reconstruction.
Trump claims nothing will come from the American public purse, but he said the same thing about the construction of the White House ballroom.
The Washington Post reported last week that approximately half of the $600-million in contractors’ invoices would be paid by the public. Private donors would cover the balance.
Trump doesn’t need a hot mic to expose his own contradictions.
Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.