The rebranding of ‘Lake America’ is Trump’s desperate attempt to distract us | Arwa Mahdawi
The Guardian · L · trust 41/100
‘As well as being a distraction, this pathetic maneuver is supposed to be a middle finger to Canada.’ Photograph: Al Drago/Pool/Al Drago - Pool/CNP/Shutterstock View image in fullscreen ‘As well as being a distraction, this pathetic maneuver is supposed to be a middle finger to Canada.’ Photograph: Al Drago/Pool/Al Drago - Pool/CNP/Shutterstock The Week in Patriarchy Donald Trump The rebranding of ‘Lake America’ is Trump’s desperate attempt to distract us Arwa Mahdawi Ignore Iran, the Epstein files, and your wallet – not to mention Trump’s plummeting approval ratings
D on’t mention the war! Or the economy, for that matter. Or the Epstein files. Or Natalie Harp. Or “affordability”, which, as Donald Trump recently said at a rally, is a word that was “never used” by the media before he took office. Best not to talk about anything that affects ordinary people or embarrasses the president, really. Instead, let’s all rejoice in Trump’s latest triumph: renaming Lake Ontario, which is shared by Canada and the US, as Lake America .
On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to America-fy the lake’s name on US maps and documents, which is an excellent use of time and resources. I suppose we can at least be thankful that the president, who is trying to slap his own name on everything from airports to the Kennedy Center , didn’t decree that the body of water be called Lake Trump.
This is not an isolated embarrassment: the Lake Ontario name change follows the president’s rebranding of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America last year. “We have a gulf and we have a lake – now all we need is an ocean. Maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific,” Trump told reporters .
Give it a few more months of the disastrous war in Iran and a bruised Trump may well make good on that threat: the man will do anything to distract from his failings.
As well as being a distraction, this pathetic maneuver is supposed to be a middle finger to Canada. Trade negotiations between the US and Canada recently collapsed , with the Trump administration imposing a 50% tariff on some goods and the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, promising a “ dollar for dollar ” response. One suspects that Trump thinks Lake Ontario is named after the Canadian province it borders. Ergo he reckons a unilateral name change is a good way of showing the US’s northern neighbour who is boss.
However, as Carney was forced to point out on social media, the name Lake Ontario has been used for more than 400 years and comes from the Indigenous Wendat/Huron word Ontari’io, meaning: “The lake is beautiful, the lake is big.” It predates both the Confederation of Canada and the US Declaration of Independence.
A US president ordering the name change of a Great Lake in order to antagonize one of its closest allies would have been headline news for weeks in a normal timeline. Now it’s just another Thursday. Still, this is more than a silly stunt that both Canada and the governor of New York have made clear they are going to ignore. It’s a glaring demonstration of just how desperate, isolated and out of ideas Trump is. His approval ratings have hit a new low , sliding 14 points from 47% at the start of his second term to 33% now amid rising costs. The Iran war, which was sold as a “ little excursion ” that would only last a few weeks has hit the six-month mark , and there isn’t a decent off-ramp in sight. And Canada isn’t the only former ally angry with Trump’s US; the country’s reputation has plummeted globally. A 36-country survey conducted by Pew earlier this year found overall ratings for the US are largely negative ; only seven countries rate the US positively, with Israel at the top of the list. Trump is weak and floundering: because he lacks the intellectual and diplomatic ability to reshape reality to his liking, he’s trying to rebrand it instead. But it doesn’t matter how many executive orders he signs; people will be calling Lake Ontario by its original name long after we can all stop calling Trump “president”.
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