Trump wants to rename an ocean after himself

Donald Trump wants an ocean named after him. After the Gulf and the Lake America, the ‘imperialist’ president is setting his sights on the Pacific or the Atlantic. ‘We should take it before’ the end of his term, he said with a smile during a rally in Clarksville, Tennessee, admitting that he would also like a river, but does not yet know which one. “I won’t rename the Hudson,” the river that flows through New York, “and I won’t rename the Mississippi,” he then assured. This is not the first time Trump has floated the idea of renaming an ocean so that it becomes “Trump’s or America’s”.

Nor are his expansionist ambitions anything new. At the start of his term, he had set his sights on Canada, which he wanted to make the 51st US state, sparking a fierce reaction from the Canadians. He then set his sights on Greenland, laying claim to it on ‘national security grounds’. For the world’s largest island, which is crucial to the Arctic, Trump managed to secure an security agreement with Copenhagen and Nuuk. ‘We will build two major military bases,’ he said, celebrating the signing of the agreement.

Recently, the commander-in-chief has also set his sights on the Middle East in the context of the war in Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is ‘American territory’, he has repeated several times in recent weeks, posting images of the crucial waterway with the caption ‘US territory’ or ‘Trump Strait’.

His latest move came on home turf, when he proposed changing the name of the state of New Mexico to New America, thereby dropping the reference to its neighbour – a state long criticised for its failure to control migrants and drugs entering the United States. Local authorities have firmly rejected his proposal, pointing out that the name ‘New Mexico’ is enshrined in Article 1 of the state constitution and can therefore only be changed if the initiative comes from the state itself.