Trump Changes Name Of Lake Ontario To Lake America: “Now, All We Need Is An Ocean”
At a signing ceremony on Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America,” effective immediately.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And finally, I guess the purpose of this more than anything else is we’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America. That’s going to take place right now as I sign the order. Do you have anything to say about it, Ben? WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: Yes, sir. So this is a straightforward but important executive order. It directs Secretary Burgin and the Department of the Interior to update the geographic names information service to reflect that Lake once known as Lake Ontario will from this day forward be known as Lake America. This is a lake that has most of its volume in the United States. The deepest parts of the lake sit in United States territory. So this will reflect that this is an American lake. TRUMP: Thank you very much. And we filed all the necessary papers documents, everything else. We’ve notified all of the various people that we have to notify. So we’ve done everything that you have to do. And this is official, effective immediately. Do you have any questions? Anybody? REPORTER: That video you put up yesterday of you crossing out Lake Ontario and writing Lake America. It’s been seen by 30 million people, maybe more across all the social media platforms. What message are you sending to Canada with this move today? And why was this such an important thing for you to do? TRUMP: It’s an interesting question. No message. As you know, Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly, even the military. You know, we defend Canada for nothing. We don’t get anything. They don’t pay us to defend Canada, but we defend Canada. And they understand that. As an example, we bought icebreakers. They’d like to use them. We have 11 brand new icebreakers coming in. They’d like to use the icebreakers. They don’t pay for anything. And they want to be treated like a state, but they’re not a state, but they want to be treated like their state. And so we just can’t do that anymore. We lose on average over the last 15 years, 60 billion dollars a year carrying Canada. So we just can’t do it anymore. We love the people of Canada. I don’t think their representatives do an appropriate job. Maybe they’ll change. I really don’t know. It doesn’t make much difference. But we can’t let the whole Canadian thing that’s been going on for decades. And it has to come to a stop. So we’re going to be doing tariffs on their cars that are coming in at a substantial level because we want to make the cars here. We don’t want, you know, if they can make their own cars if they want, and they can continue to make their cars for Canada. But we don’t want to make, we don’t want them to make cars for the United States of America. It’s very simple. Likewise, many other products. So the lake change in the Lake of America was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, actually. As you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico. We changed it. And now it’s very routinely the Gulf of America. So if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them. REPORTER: Mr. President, why are you so focused on doing things like this towards America’s allies instead of doing things that target adversaries? TRUMP: The Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They’re nasty people. They charge our farmers 400 percent tariffs. They’ve been doing it for a long time. And I had them figured out in my first term. And I did some pretty strong things and had it getting pretty good. And then the election was rigged. And now I’m coming back and doing it the way and finishing the job. But they treat us very badly. Canada treats us very badly. I would say that of all countries, as you know, we have President Xi coming in a couple of weeks. We have a lot of with a lot of people, people that oftentimes they’ll ask me, who’s the worst to deal with on trade? And I said, that’s easy. Canada, they are the worst. And they feel entitled. And just we can’t have that.
