With a couple of weeks remaining before his second presidential inaugural, Donald Trump made an unexpected announcement. “[W]e’ll be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring,” the Republican said, adding that the change would be “appropriate” because the body of water is “ours.”
Though the declaration sounded like satire, Trump was quite serious — and his allies wasted little time in embracing the preferred partisan nomenclature. In fact, just one day after Trump made the comments, Republican Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia used “Gulf of America” during a Fox Business interview, as if the change had already occurred.
Earlier this week, the newly sworn-in president talked up the idea again in his inaugural address, which coincided with Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” in a state executive order. Hours later, Trump signed an executive order giving the Interior Department 30 days to take “all appropriate action” to codify the new name.
A day later, Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas published an item to social media urging Apple to complain that the tech giant’s map application still refers to the Gulf of Mexico.
As bizarre as all of this might seem, the administration is starting to lean into the effort. The Washington Post reported:
The Coast Guard will surge additional resources to the “Gulf of America” and several other locations, the service said in a statement Tuesday. … The statement marked one of the U.S. government’s first official uses of President Donald Trump’s desired name for the Gulf of Mexico, a policy shift that has elicited derision from his domestic political foes and leaders in Mexico.
When the Post asked about the shift away from the body of water’s existing name, Coast Guard officials cited Trump’s executive order. Or put another way, they probably didn’t think they had much of a choice. The Republican administration has already fired the commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan — the first woman to ever lead a branch of the American armed forces — so it stands to reason that Coast Guard officials will use the White House’s preferred phrasing. Time will tell whether, and to what extent, this catches on, but I won’t be surprised if “Gulf of America” becomes one of those phrases only Republicans use, joining “Democrat Party,” “job creators” and “death tax.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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