You’re familiar with the Gulf of America.
It is that large body of seawater north of Mexico and south of the United States. Most of the world calls it the Gulf of Mexico. But Donald Trump renamed it.
In MAGA world, it’s the Gulf of America.
“What’s in a name?” asks the New York Times. “Trump loves to rename things,” writes Jodi Rudoren, who oversees Times newsletters. It is “part of his Great Unwokening quest. But it’s also a way he asserts power.”
At one point he demanded that the Washington Commanders restore their racist name — the Washington Redskins. “It was both an attempt to change the conversation (which at the time was about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein),” Rudoren writes, “and a rallying cry to the right.”
“The power to rename things is the power to define reality.” Rudoren quotes Jennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M communication professor, who has written a book about Trump’s rhetorical style. “It goes hand in hand with Trump’s assertions that are not backed by evidence, or fly in the face of it. Remember ‘alternative facts?’ Redefinitions of reality have been central to his success.”
Mr. President, you have fallen behind in renaming things.
Here are some suggestions:
• Vast waterfalls straddle the U.S.-Canadian border. The Canadian side is the most dramatic side. From Canada, one can see all three of the falls, including famous Horseshoe Falls. The real world calls all of this cascading water Niagara Falls.
American Falls has a ring to it.
• In the Black Hills of South Dakota stands a majestic mountain carved with the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. The real world calls it Mount Rushmore.
You could summon sculptors, and when they are finished rename it Mount Trump.
• Across Arizona, from the eastern end of the Grand Canyon to the Petrified Forest, stretch 150 miles of pink, purple and orange mineral deposits called the Painted Desert.
Touch up the landscape with your favorite black marker and you have the Sharpie Wasteland.
• At the top of the United States are the Great Lakes. Why hold back? How about the Greatest Lakes?
As the greatest of those, Lake Superior cries out to be Lake Donald J. Trump, the Favorite President.
• Then there’s the Mississippi River. Rename it the MAGAsippi.
Or you could go for something extremely big. Take a suggestion, with a dash of sarcasm, from California Democratic Congressman Jared Huffman.
Stop calling this planet Earth. Rename it Planet Trump.
Rudoren writes that Professor Mercieca considers renaming “frame warfare.”
“What you call a thing determines the contours of the debate around it,” Rudoren says. “Or precludes debate altogether. ‘Did you borrow a car without permission, or did you steal it?’
“‘Was the crush of migrants at the Mexican border an invasion or a humanitarian crisis?’
“All politicians try to play the frame game,” Rudoren says. “Trump is a master at it.”
