Remember that West Wing episode where North Dakota pitches changing the state’s name? They want to drop the “North” cause they think it denotes winter and cold and that South Dakota is soaking up all the tourism as a result. What made it funny was the befuddlement of the Bartlet administration over how to even begin to consider changing the name after over 100 years of statehood. Well, welcome to the unfunny and supremely inane real life version: high off of recently renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America (with an authority he does not possess), Donald Trump revealed over the weekend that he’s thinking about giving the 47th state in the union the same treatment. Meaning, New Mexico would become New America. It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.
Trump, 80, shared a map of the state with the words “New Mexico” in red lettering — but with “Mexico” crossed out and replaced with “America” — in a Truth Social post on Sunday, Sept. 6.
The post did not include a caption or any follow-up text.
New Mexico became the 47th U.S. state on Jan. 6, 1912.
The name New Mexico comes from the Spanish Nuevo México and was used centuries earlier by Spanish explorers, per Britannica.
The president’s recent post about the state comes 10 days after he signed an executive order changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America on Aug. 27. He said the decision was in response to what he claims are unfair trade relations between the U.S. and Canada.
“As you know, Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after signing the executive order. “We defend Canada for nothing… They don’t pay us to defend Canada, but we defend Canada.”
“They don’t pay for anything, and they want to be treated like a state, but they’re not a state,” he continued. “They want to be treated like they’re a state, and we just can’t do that anymore.”
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” Trump added.
The president first announced that he was considering changing the name of the Great Lake in a Truth Social post two days earlier on Aug. 25.
…While the U.S. government has authority to change landmark names on domestic maps, Trump cannot force other nations or international organizations to adopt his name adjustments, according to The Associated Press.
Major mapping services, including Google Maps, Apple Maps and Microsoft’s Bing Maps, have adopted the “Gulf of America” for U.S. users.
Google Maps and Apple Maps have additionally adopted Lake America for those viewing their apps in the U.S.
Heavy, weary sigh. I guess it was only a matter of time before Trump expanded from bodies of water to stretches of land, but still. As of this writing, Google Maps hasn’t revised their maps to say “New America,” which actually surprised me, as they couldn’t trip over their d-cks fast enough to update to the “Lake of America” malarkey. And just as in that case, where Trump is too uneducated to know that the Canadian province of Ontario was named after the lake, not the other way around, so here is the Ignoramus-in-Chief seemingly unaware of New Mexico’s lineage. Like the fact that the territory was a part of Mexico before being ceded to the US, after, of course, being “claimed” by Europeans when the land really belonged to Native Americans. Anyway, I’d wager Trump will stop short of an executive order (illegally) enacting “New America,” because fake renaming a state is more complicated than fake renaming shared bodies of water. But then again, I also figured there was no way Tweedledrumpf would ever get elected (or reelected), so all bets are off.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 6, 2026
Trump just made seven consecutive posts on social media, within minutes, all about renaming New Mexico, New America. He did this on Labor Day as our country is at war and suffering the highest diesel prices in history.
As an American if you aren’t concerned, you better get… pic.twitter.com/99mvhSm6Bd
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) September 7, 2026
Photos credit: B. Kane on Pexels, Jeffrey Keenan on Unsplash and via YouTube
