President Trump signed an executive order Thursday renaming Lake Ontario to "Lake America" — and then quipped that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans could be next on the rebranding list.
"So maybe we'll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific," Trump told reporters, flashing a grin after inking the order that wipes a name older than the United States itself off the map.
The offhand remark sent the White House press corps into a frenzy and immediately lit up social media, where critics howled that the president was treating the world's oceans like a Monopoly board and supporters cheered what they called a patriotic flex.
'Lake America' is now the law
The executive order, signed in front of cameras, officially redesignates Lake Ontario — one of the five Great Lakes straddling the US-Canada border — as "Lake America," a move the administration says underscores American sovereignty over the shared waterway.
Trump has been needling Canada for weeks over a deepening trade dispute, and the lake rename is the latest escalation. He has accused Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney of lying about the administration's position on French-language protections, and the two leaders have traded barbs as tariff tensions mount along the northern border.
Vice President Vance piled on this week, calling Canada a "state" in what critics branded a "Freudian slip" while blasting Ottawa's trade policy as "insanity."
Hochul: Not on my watch
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, whose state borders the newly christened "Lake America," rejected the renaming outright, delivering a blunt message that her administration would not adopt the new name.
"We're not calling it that," Hochul said, in a direct shot at a president who has made rebranding American landmarks a signature of his second term.
The pushback from a Democratic governor sets up a fresh federal-state clash over naming authority, with the US Board on Geographic Names historically handling such decisions — though Trump has shown little patience for bureaucratic precedent.
From the Gulf of America to the Atlantic?
The ocean quip is not Trump's first naming rodeo. He previously renamed the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" and has mused publicly about stamping his brand on other iconic American landmarks.
But the Atlantic and Pacific — two bodies of water that predate human civilization and span tens of thousands of miles — would be his boldest rebrand yet, if he were serious. The White House did not immediately clarify whether the president was joking or floating a genuine policy idea.
Given Trump's track record of turning throwaway lines into executive orders, nobody on either side of the aisle was ruling anything out.
