(CNN) — Calling Canadians “nasty people,” President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday ordering the renaming of Lake Ontario as his frustration grows that Canada, the longtime friend he’s turned into an adversary won’t cave to his terms in a trade war.
The gesture doesn’t change much — Trump has no control over how international bodies or other countries refer to the lake, though he can require the US government to refer to it as “Lake America.” The same issue applies to his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America last year.
His move — while apparently designed to punish Canada and show his power — will nevertheless be seen as something of a cover for failure after Ottawa walked away from talks and decided to match his own sharply rising tariffs, arguing that he was trying to encroach on its sovereignty.
“‘Lake of America’ was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” Trump said, surrounding by maps of the Great Lakes in the Oval Office. “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 both.”
America’s bulldozer president also threatened this week to raze the Kennedy Center if courts continue to block his attempt to renovate the nation’s premier arts center.
The twin episodes also raise the glaring question of why Trump fixates on such trifles even as his war in Iran grinds on and Americans despair at high prices for food, fuel and housing ahead of the midterm elections.
But the trolling is Trump at his most authentic. It shows how he wields the politics of spectacle to outrage elites, confound establishments and ignite media storms. It’s all a way of burnishing his outsider image and uniting his populist coalition.
There’s almost no institution that he won’t try to disrupt — or destroy, if it resists his power. No building, natural landmark or historic artifact is safe from the branding maestro’s eye. Courts, the Constitution and US allies be damned; Trump seeks to leave a mark on the landscape and the map to ensure the world remembers him.
But while the president sees openings for unaccountable power, his extreme reactions this week also hint at growing impotence. His legal team is threatening to demolish the Kennedy Center only because the courts have confounded his plans to renovate it — and, perhaps not incidentally, to put his name on the front.
And renaming the vast inland sea between Ontario and New York State seems a poor substitute for what he truly covets: to make Canada the 51st US state.
Disdain for an American hero
Trump’s latest threat to the Kennedy Center emerged in legal documents related to a court attempt to thwart his bid for control. His team warns that if renovations don’t happen, the center may need to be replaced by an open-air amphitheater.
Most immediately, Trump is trying a familiar device by adopting an apparently outlandish legal argument to game the judicial process. Judges have previously ruled that the president lacks the authority to change the building’s name or to authorize major structural work. That power resides with Congress — not the presidentially appointed trustees he’s lined up to empower his takeover bid.
But the saga is also remarkable for Trump’s obliviousness to the optics of taking over a living memorial to an assassinated president who staved off nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Perhaps he’d like to deal an insult to a great American and Democratic dynasty that still enjoys the historic recognition that he seems to crave, but that so far eludes him.
It’s hard to argue that — for all Trump’s showbiz nous — his interest has been anything other than disastrous for the Kennedy Center. The Washington National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra have left home. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that ticket sales and donations plummeted after Trump’s board voted to put his name on the building. Farcical scenes followed, with a tarp covering the facade after the president was ordered by a court to erase his name from alongside that of the 35th president.
Critics will likely see the new threat to destroy the center altogether as yet another act of revenge, or an attempt to cover up another embarrassing Trump project, along with the botched renovation of Washington’s Reflecting Pool.
Trump, however, insists he’s beautifying a capital that has been left to decay in recent times. And it’s true that cleaning up fountains, parks, statues and some public buildings has been in many cases an aesthetic improvement.
Meanwhile, another legal showdown threatens to halt construction on the ballroom that is replacing the White House East Wing, which he tore down in another legally questionable power grab. And his proposed towering arch that would overshadow the capital’s sacred sight lines is seen by many as a future memorial to presidential hubris.
But there may be political mileage for Trump in the Kennedy Center imbroglio even if he loses the legal fight. Turfing the capital’s cultural deep state out of their palace of the arts is hardly likely to harm Trump’s populist credentials.
The troller, trolled
The president’s Great Lake renaming ceremony was a gesture of mockery and contempt toward a loyal neighbor that has long been sending its sons to die in America’s wars — sacrifices Trump ignores.
Trump loves trolling. His most viral posts often create outrage in the political establishment, among his foes and in traditional media. This serves to please his base and right-wing media.
His proposal to Make one of the Great Lakes Great Again is not even a new move. It mirrors his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America, announced during his inaugural address last year. When he did so, Hillary Clinton, his vanquished 2016 opponent, couldn’t contain her giggles. For Never-Trumpers it was a moment of ridicule. But the episode turned out to be a glimpse of an incoming president with a habit of redrawing maps to suit his monarchical whims.
A few weeks ago, Trump mused about declaring the Strait of Hormuz, which is under an Iranian stranglehold, US territory. A president can’t just declare a foreign waterway he doesn’t control part of the United States. But the troll delighted conservative pundits and for a little while turned attention away from his failure to end a war he claimed that he’d won after a few days last winter.
All presidents use naming rights as a tool of political power, to reflect their ideology and to try to define their age.
But Trump takes it to another level, fittingly for a serial brander who made his fortune putting his name on hotels and golf courses, steaks and sneakers.
His administration has renamed military bases, warships and mountain peaks to empower what it sees as its anti-woke crusade. It hauled out the old name for Mount McKinley in Alaska, for example, which had been renamed Denali by President Barack Obama after its historic Native American title.
And CNN reported last week that the Pentagon — under its testosterone-fueled new moniker the Department of War — is considering renaming an aircraft carrier under construction, potentially for Trump. It had been slated to honor Black Pearl Harbor hero Doris “Dorie” Miller.
Justifying his move on Lake Ontario, Trump said this week that there was no need to mention the province because two-way trade with the US would soon peter out.
But of course the troller in chief can himself be trolled.
“Let’s just call it Lake Natalie so we know you’ll start protecting our Great Lakes,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan wrote on X, in an arch reference to White House executive assistant Natalie Harp, the president’s ubiquitous aide.
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