BREAKING: Trump Orders Lake Ontario Renamed to "Lake America"

0:00Everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing out at the ballroom. I'm joined by Andrew Egger and I want to apologize to everyone who's tuning in a pre-warning. This is the stupidest, stupidest bullwork take that we will ever do. I hope actually it probably can get worse. The stupidest bullwork take so far. So far. We're joining you live because Donald Trump has just issued an executive order actually renaming Lake Ontario Lake America. It doesn't get dumber than this folks. It's not just that it's done. It's unoriginal. He did this for the Gulf of Mexico already. He's doing this right now because he's frustrated with Canada because they're not taking his trade war lightly. There you see the map that the White House put out. Lake America right there. Now, Andrew, I have a lot of thoughts on this. Before we get into this, I'm going to ask people who are watching that in exchange for us sorting through this nonsense for them, become a Bullock subscriber.

1:02Scribe to our feed on YouTube. Maybe go to Substack, hit the button. It makes us feel good for having to do this stuff. Now, Andrew, as a lover of lakes, the floor is yours. Yeah, I'm like our Great Lakes correspondent around here these days. I feel like I'm in up. Yeah, I don't know. We did have a nice little riff on the podcast. I love the Great Lakes. The first thing we should say about this is you said Trump is renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America in a certain sense that's true, right? In another sense, it's not. I mean, like the president of the United States can do a lot of things. It is very unfortunate that this guy is sitting here and is able to snap his fingers and make stupid things happen. But it is only true in a narrow sense that he can rename this lake. He can command the federal government to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake America going forward, much the same way that he could command them to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America or refer to the Kennedy Center as the Trump Kennedy Center, all these sorts of things. In practice, it will be a lot messier. Other countries are not going to follow our lead on this.

2:02Various private firms may not follow. You know, the president's lead on this. There has been not a lot of uptick actually in calling the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. People have sort of slipped back into the old way of doing things. There will be certain tech oligarchs who might find it useful to curry the president's favor by, for instance, renaming the map in Google Maps. That remains true. The Gulf of Mexico is, if you pull open Google Maps, it will be the Gulf of America, things like that. But we should not overstate the president's ability to snap his fingers and change reality here. Yeah, but it also would not nothing, right? Oh yeah. I remember driving through the keys shortly after the Gulf of Mexico change happened and pulling up my Google Maps and be like, Holy shit, it actually does read Gulf of America. With respect to what he can do, yeah. So you force the federal government to adopt all new language on its maps in its literature. I'll give you a sense of the things that do change here because we went through this whole rigour

3:04marole when the Gulf of Mexico got changed by Trump. So things that have to change because the government's decrying them different that will incur costs potentially. Government documents and maps. I mean, we're talking like every government map. Like, it's got to be taken down and put back up all the technology, all the websites. I went, I just did like a sort of rudimentary perusal through government website pages. Like, there was one, I think it was either on, I think it was the federal wider server was NOAA. There's like dozens and dozens of pages where the like, Ventarius listed big maps of it. They're going to have to change all of them. Maybe we can get the, let's get the one from the, from the forest and wildlife services up there. It just has Lake of Ontario. So that's one. Educational materials. So you got uptick textbooks, atlases, digital resources, cartography and mapping services.

4:05Look at that. That's the, that's a current government website. We're showing you Lake Ontario, right there. It's got change. Okay. So we have signage public infrastructure. So anything in and around Lake Ontario, you got to get rid of the signs. Anything that's a federal government building, I get rid of the signs. And then if the private sector costs tourism, shipping, fishing, they don't have to adopt it, but it could, they might have to adopt it. So like, and then there's the litigation that's going to come with this. So it's costly. It's not nothing. Yeah, no, 100% and just to lean in on like, again, what triggered this and how flaky and ridiculous it is. I mean, we've talked about this in the past, but we were now in a trade war with Canada that we weren't before. It kind of came out of nowhere over the weekend, negotiating with the whole part. Why are we in this trade war? Why I don't understand this. Well, it's been, remind me. I mean, yeah, the, the president has been, Canada has basically been one of the four, four most countries in not just sort of telling Trump anything he wants to hear on trade in order to get him to move along to bully some other country that's not them when it comes to these trade wars.

5:07And this dates back to the very earliest months of, of this administration when Trump declared economic war first and foremost on Mexico and Canada, supposedly over fentanyl smuggling over the border. Right. Mexico, Mexico basically said, oh, you're absolutely right, Mr. President, sir, we're going to get a handle on that right away. Don't you worry about it. Canada said, we don't, there is no fentanyl smuggling over the US Canada border. We don't really understand why you are turning this into a giant crisis. And, and Trump didn't like that he was stood up to and that got the ball rolling on this, this trade war he is, he's been matter and matter at Canada. And ever since it's been snowballing, they thought that there was going to be a reprieve. They thought that they were going to sign a deal last week. They didn't. Canada's, you know, now pretty anti-Trump, pretty anti-American bullying government basically said, we're not going to let you push us around. The premiere of Ontario got on the radio and said, Trump can kiss my ass. Trump doesn't like that. So he's, he looks at a map. He's like, the premiere of Ontario said that, huh? Well, Ontario doesn't get a lake anymore. Never mind that Ontario, the province is actually named after Ontario, the lake.

6:07But yes, this is the sort of thing. Look at it to the thing. This is the sort of thing that that drives these sorts of map making decisions in our very cool and normal day and age. Well, we haven't actually played the video of Trump. As far as I can recall, we've been on this for like 10 minutes, not even six minutes. We haven't played video Trump. Let's watch Trump sitting in the Oval Office. And again, I want you to focus on the fact that he says, the purpose of this, the, so we call this meeting for this purpose. Let's watch our president. And finally, I guess the purpose of this more than anything else is we're going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario. Effective immediately to Lake America. That's going to take place right now as I sign the order. Do you have anything to say about it, Ben? Yes, sir. So this is a straightforward but important executive order. It directs secretary Bergen and the Department of the Interior to update the geographic names information service to reflect that Lake once known as Lake Ontario will from the

7:10state forward be known as Lake America. I can't get over this. Like Doug Bergen standing there, stoic. This guy was like not so long ago, the governor of a state, a respected business leader. And now he's tasked with changing the names of lakes and fixing the reflecting pool. It's such a sad fall from grace. Yeah, no, I mean, it really is something. And I mean, just the silliness of, keep coming back to it, but reaching for this specific thing, like, like, there's stuff we're doing in this trade war that's really going to hurt Canada. Well, how do you think it went? How do you think it went down in the oval when they want to get to this? Just like, pay us a picture. I don't know, man. Like, like, Trump loves Trump's loves to rename shit. He loves that there are so few things in this world that he can actually just sort of snap his fingers and like, sort of speak these things into existence. It's a source of endless frustration to him how, you know, how many things don't work that way. And I think it's like, it's just such a release for him when it's like, oh, yeah, you know,

8:10I know what we can do. We can bully them on the map. I'm honestly surprised we have not seen this more often. I'm surprised that there haven't been more public calls for Trump to just announce that the straight of horror moves is called the straight of America now. And like, that's our big win in the Iran War. But, but yeah, I mean, I, they have so much fun with it with the AI stuff, you know, the AI maps they put out and things like this. But again, like, yeah, there's definitely an aid in there in the oval as they're doing some brainstorm. Probably Trump was not there. He's probably back at the residence. Like, you know, what would the boss really like? Like, like, like, channel the boss. And then they're like, you know, the Gulf of Mexico thing really got him jazz. Why don't we just do that with Lake Ontario? And then someone's probably like, you know, it's not named after the province. You can't, that's named after this, this, we're on phrase about, you know, great lake. It's just me and the world. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry about that. He thinks it's Ontario. And so then they presented to him. He's like, I love it. I love it. By the way, in our comments, he mentioned straight of moves. Someone suggested that canna she respond to this by renaming it, the lake of horror moves,

9:16just to fuck with Trump. I think Debbie Dingell sent a station name like Natalie so that he would stop bothering him. And then he would let him. Anyways, so we went through the costs. I want to go through the politics and the political pop in popularity or I should say lack there of a couple of things here. So after the Gulf of Mexico, when he changed it to the Gulf of America, the House of Representatives passed a bill to codify it. Because basically Trump can order it. And I believe it's the US board of geographic names is in charge of administering it. But the House wanted to codify it back back in the hey days of Trump. And it was a 2000. It was going good for him. Yeah. Well, I thought so. Let's pause for a second there. Because do you remember that early reaction whenever it was like, this is awesome. This is so sick. And they're like, we're really winning. And the Gulf is now Gulf America. Yeah. Like lags everywhere. People like you can just do things. Remember you can do things.

10:16Man, this is awesome. And I don't really see that reaction right now. Anyways, back then it was one Marjorie Taylor green. This is how far we've gone. Marjorie Taylor green in January of 2025 who introduced legislation to codify the Gulf of America. It passed, but it was only 211 to 206. And I bet they thought at the time that this was like a real fun wedge to like throw a Democrat. How could you be against anything renaming in America? But you pulled up this data, which I thought was amazing. From the Marquette University, but why don't you talk about that? Yeah. So this is a poll that Marquette University did in February 2025 where they were basically just pulling straight up and down. Do you support or oppose several of these really early executive orders that Trump did his first flurry of executive orders back in office? Some of them are really popular. You know, it's like we're cool with you cracking down on a legal immigration and getting the border under control in these various ways. There were two that were quite unpopular.

11:16One was his act to pardon every rioter on January 6th. Obviously, that's not really a surprise that people were overall sort of unhappy about that one. But even more unpopular than that was from decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. You can see that on that graph. I mean, it's really small on my screen. Hopefully it's bigger on some of your screens. That's a very bottom thing on that graph. It's like not even, it's sort of a yawning chasm between that. It's like five or 10% more even than the J6 riot or pardons where people are like, well, you know, that one feels weird. I kind of have a theory about that. But I can maybe save it. But let me just read the numbers. Then you give them in theory. So for those who are listening and not watching, according to this poll, again, this is during the heyday, like the high watermark for Trump. This is early February 2025. It was 29% favor renaming the Gulf of Mexico. 71% oppose. And then as for pardoning J6 defendants, it was 34% favor. So 5% higher.

12:16And 65% oppose. So yeah, what was your theory? Well, I just think, I mean, it's interesting because the other unpopular one on there is take back the Panama Canal, right? And I think that this was unpopular at the time. And I think this will, this new one on the lake will be unpopular for sort of the same reason, which is that everybody kind of knows that President Trump is crazy, right? I mean, he has a base of support, really core group of people who like that about him. And I think that's like great. And that's what we need in a president. There's a much broader group of people who are sort of uncomfortable with it. But a lot of people have these sorts of nice beliefs that they sort of wall that off with, right? Like, oh, you know, he might be a bit of a lunatic, but like there's all these people who surround him. And you know, they keep that from bleeding over into public policy too much. And when the president, when there are these moments, when he just gets some crazy idea in his head and snaps his fingers and says, this is the way it is now. And people can see the entire apparatus of the United States government just sort of

13:19lurch into gear to implement it, to put it into into reality, in real like real meat space existence in America. That kind of brings people up short where they're like, whoa, okay, what's happening here? We're doing what now? What's getting renamed? You know, these these bodies of water that have been this way are entire lives just because the president thought it'd be cool. That's different now. And it really does put his lunacy in a different and sort of more unnerving light. Even though these changes are just not actually that impactful in and of themselves, they do shine a different light on the way the president operates in the way. Because he's the president, he has a lot of these authorities. But even it's even going to be worse now because back then, there wasn't like we were in a war with Iran and the cost of living stuff had not been lingering for months. Now it just looks like he's totally out of touch. In the guys. He's lost 40% of the approval that he had then. He was north of 50, you know, 55% approval in some of these polls right around this time. He's in the mid 30s now.

14:20So it's a far far more hostile picture in terms of public opinion of the president. Oh yeah, and it just reinforces this image that he's both out of touch and out of ideas and flailing pretty badly against the Canadians. Of all people, the fucking Canadians speaking of, he's quite angry with them. Here's him talking about how badly Canada has treated us. I'm doing things like this towards America's allies instead of doing things that talk about history. The Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They're nasty people. They charge your farmers 400% tariffs. They've been doing it for a long time. And I had them figured out in my first term and I did some pretty strong things and had it getting pretty good. And then the election was rigged and now I'm coming back and doing it the way it and finishing the job. But they treat us very badly. Canada treats us very badly. I would say that of all countries, as you know we have President Xi coming in a couple of weeks. We have a lot of, we deal with a lot of people. People oftentimes, they'll ask me, who's the worst to deal with on trade?

15:25And I said, that's easy. Canada. They are the worst to do. And they feel entitled and just we can't have that. Fucking hell. So entitled, man. Yeah. He's up in the Canadians. We have a few that we know. And I'm not going to speak ill of our editor on staff who's based in Canada, but he's entitled. Yeah, but he got that from growing up here. Here, right. He's a trans. He didn't pick that up in Canada. I mean, there's so much impact there. And I don't, obviously, a lot of it's just absurd and bullshit. But I will just note that he cut the trade deal with Canada and Mexico in his first term that he then blew up. I mean, there's no logic to this. Man's out of his, man's out of his element. I don't know. Is anything else the same? I mean, it is kind of crazy. I just keep coming back to this. Like the sort of broad, late night kind of comedy that you would get in early 2017 that was all about the Trump hotel

16:30White House and sketching these silly futures of Donald Trump hobnobbing around with Xi Jinping to kibbits about how much they both hate doing trade with Canada. We didn't get quite that picture in Trump's first term. It is crazy just how far into all of those, just sort of like resistance, phantasia joke material type stuff. That's true. That's just reality today. Yeah. That's true. If they'd done some SNLs get where Trump was sitting around like renaming things on the map and talking about how awful Canadians were, this is just the absurd knowns going to buy it, but we're here. We're fucking here. We got to go to a little bit of a break. But on the other side of this, we're going to be talking about some more serious stuff because there were other portions of this event. Where we talked about like substantive things involving Russia, where our CIA director just took a sort of a dramatic visit to Moscow and in Trump was asked to address that. And then of course,

17:32all the stuff happening in Iran, but we'll get to that on the other side of this commercial break. And that's just sponsored by Upwork. One thing I've learned from working in media is that you can't do everything yourself. I've tried. It sucks. I failed. There's a point where you have to recognize what you're good at. And then find people who are experts at things that you're not good at. That's where Upwork comes in. Upwork gives you fast access to highly skilled freelance professionals who can help fill critical skill gaps, who can launch projects faster and who can give your team the expertise that it needs without committing to another full hire. You can find specialists for everything from marketing and design to software development and implementation and business operations. You can browse profiles, review past work, and hire people with proven track records. Also, you can feel confident that you're bringing in the right person onto the project. And if you need the best of the best, well, business plus gives you access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork. It's AI Power, short listing can deliver a curated list of top freelancers matched to your goals

18:32in under six hours. So you're not spending days scrolling through profiles. And folks, I've been there hiring is so difficult. I've scrolled through profiles and it is a pain. So visit Upwork.com right now. And post your job free. That is upwork.com to connect with top talent, ready to help your business grow. That's u-p-w-o-r-k.com. Upwork.com. Well, let's think about Canada, which I forgot to mention, which is he's talking about how they're belligerent and as he does. Like they didn't talk, they weren't talking about becoming the 51st state. He was. They weren't talking about annexation. He was. He's full of it. All right. Iran, Russia. So Trump was asked about this. John McLeff went to Moscow. The reports were that he went there because he was encouraging Russia not to attack NATO, which is something that's been in the ether for a little bit. One of the reasons Russia may feel emboldened to attack NATO is because the United States has pulled back from

19:33aligning with NATO and our missile defenses have been depleted incredibly. By what's happening in Iran, there's an AP story just from this morning. The alert is US military faces quote, beyond critical shortage of patriot missiles in Europe, largely driven by the Iran war in Europe. Okay. So that might be an invitation for the Russians. Trump was asked about this and here's what he had to say. The last coup in agreed or committed to not attacking a NATO territory. I had good talk for when the peace is not going to be attacking a NATO territory. All right. There. Done. Sure hope so. I would like for him to be correct about that. That seems really useful, right? Yeah. I'm not sure I don't know when he's had good talks with him, but let's hope that's the case. What do you make of all this? I mean, so obviously the military is in bad spot. I think it's pretty much established fact now that we have

20:33critical missile shortages due to Iran. And of course, there's no real resolution on the horizon for what's happening any Iran. So like we just did this kind of bad status for our foreign policy. I don't really see what the what the game plan is here. Yeah, I mean, the short answer is yes. There really isn't any fix for the for the whole in our current missile stockpiles because it just takes years and years to bring these things back up, sort of even under best conditions. I mean, they want a whole bunch more money to replenish these somewhat more quickly, to throw more money at this problem. But even under the budget request that the White House is making, that is still not like we can snap our fingers and get a bunch more Patriots tomorrow, right? Most of these missiles that we have shortages of are of two sorts. It's like the AP story this morning was primarily talking about these Patriot interceptors, defensive missiles, basically. If Russia were to launch at a NATO country, the way Russia has been launching at Ukraine, these are the missiles that would let us neuter that first strike.

21:33We would still have a lot of punch back capability, which is still the main thing that would deter Russia from making a strike like this, is that we could still sort of rain hell down in response. But what we would not be able to do nearly as well as previously, and unfortunately what we've started to see in Ukraine is that Ukraine has not been able to do as well as even Ukraine had prior in this conflict was whether those Russian strikes with minimal damage to infrastructure and civilian life. So it's not necessarily like Russia's like, oh, let's get them while they're down because we won't have to pay a price for it. But we are at a much more unnerving and vulnerable place than we would otherwise have been. Yeah, I mean, we've invested in a crowd amount of resources, global reputation, weapons, and so on in Iran for this war without seeming any end, or real tangible purpose to begin with. And we did so right at the time when it looked like Ukraine was turning the tides and it's war on Russia.

22:33And now we're at a place where we're essentially going to Russia saying, hey, don't go into NATO countries and also please don't strike a nuclear deal with Iran, which is the other thing that has been surfacing in reports that the Iranians and the Russians are close to striking a nuclear deal. Trump has asked about that as well. Let's play that video. And there is reports that Vladimir Putin is meeting with the president of Iran to talk about a nuclear agreement next week. Is there concern in the administration and the White House that these countries are taking economic d-day seriously, that they're going to continue doing business with Iran despite the war. Iranians, they're not paying their troops. They're in deep trouble. They have very little capacity. Last night we took 24 boats through the strait. We're taking them through all the time. I say it very openly. It doesn't mean we're finished with the military, but we are the strait is open. As you know, the strait of hormones is open.

23:35We have control, we have the blockade. Iran's not getting anything. Nothing is going through. Not one ship has got to be. So do you punish Putin or Russia if they can take the plane? Well, it depends. It depends so far. I think Russia's behaved quite well having to do with the strait of hormones. Unreal. Unreal. I don't even know where you want to start there. 24 ships. Let's start with that. What was the first one? No, but also wasn't the average, about 140 or so prior to the war. So I don't remember exactly. I have not been refreshed to the Hormuz ship tracker. How do you do that? You have that on your webpage? I head over there whenever I write about it, which is sporadically. It's not true that it's open. We are still at a tiny trickle of the traffic that we've had, which is why there are problems. If the strait of hormones were open, we would not be doing economic D-Day. There would be no. The Trump administration would take that as the world's biggest win. It would breed the hugeest cyber league of all time.

24:36That the president is correct. Finally, the strait of hormones is open. Gas prices would fall. We would all go home and be happy. And that's not what we're at. It's not where we are. It's not the situation where we're at. It is ironic, of course, that this big economic D-Day that they were touting. They unveiled it and suddenly it was like, wait a second. It's not that big. It's not implemented right away. But he's just going absolutely him on Canada. I'm not going to. It totally gives away the game where the whole point of it is secondary sanitary sanctions. The whole point of it is that we're going to be willing not only to hit Iran hard economically, but hit anybody who is willing to associate economically with Iran. Very hard. I mean, that's like, it's a giant step up and that's supposedly what makes it economic D-Day. But then you get the president right there where the question is, well, so if Russia, you know, flaunts these sanctions and just keeps dealing with Iran, what are you going to do? And he immediately goes totally soft and merely mountains. Like, well, you know, I think they've been pretty good, you know. And like, so there's no, there's nothing to do. There's no, there's no teeth in it at all.

25:37It's not it. It's not an unpot, it's not like beyond the realm of possibility that we end up having a harder economic regime against Canada than we do against like, well, I won't go that far. We'll have hard, we'll have hard, we'll have hard, but it's like the secondary sanctions issue. I think we're going to go hard on Russia over their business with Iran. We'll probably go harder on Canada. Wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be like a cool consolation prize if after all of these years, a few milleations of, you know, Trump and his bromance with Putin and all this stuff where he puts Zelensky through hell in the Oval Office and he, you know, shook around our policy toward Ukraine, like for a year and just just has behaved horribly. Wouldn't it be at least something if after all of that the United States could produce as like a bobble we actually have now become closer in our diplomatic ties with Russia and we actually are able to wield more soft power over that country and get them to not, you know, funnel an economic lifeline to this other country we're at war with Iran.

26:39But no, it's like we can't get anything new even out of Russia even even though we have sort of turned US foreign policy on its head in order to be soft on these guys in a lot of different ways and and and all that we have to show for it is that Putin knows that Trump is a stooge and can continue to manipulate us in these ways. It really is insane. It's true. Like we've been over backwards for the guy and we can't get into the stopper with Ukraine, which was post-Eundate one and now he's gonna do a new nuclear deal with Iran and we're like, well, you know, he's been good on the straight. I don't know, man. I'm just I still can't get over the lake. America shit. Because we're going to change all this stuff, our signage, all these websites, all this thing, all this bullshit. And then in two years or whatever, three years we're going to just change it back. What a waste. This whole thing is so stupid. I did tell everyone. I did warn everyone at the beginning of this broadcast. This was the dumbest take we all ever do for now. But there's still like 68 days to go. So it is going to be fun. It's going to be fun. No, it's not. No, no, no, the re-renaming. That would be re-renaming.

27:41Okay. Okay. A couple of a lot of things. Well, if you're in the comments section, you know, if you're in the comments section, throw out some ideas of both predictions of things that Trump will now move on to because I won't point to talk like about. I think he was joking. Well, he's like, we got a golf. We got a leg. Now we need an ocean. And he was talking about renaming the Pacific. I don't know. Okay. What would he realistic in the comments? What would he realistically rename? And then two, if you were to be president after Trump, what would you rename? Okay. Put those in the comments. Meanwhile, before we go, one last plea, two last pleas to the people who are watching. First of all, thank you for watching. Two, subscribe to the feed and three big news. Really big news. We are doing a fall tour. So we have three stops. Andrew's going to be one of them. Colombia. That's Columbia, South Carolina on October 16th. We got Charlotte, North Carolina on October 18th. We got Atlanta, Georgia on October 20th.

28:42We're calling it the good fight tour ticket sales for these dates are now live. This is going to be our ramp up to the midterms. You're going to want to come hang out with me. Sarah, JVL, Tim rest of the gang, including Andrew. So look, if you are a paid member on subset, you just go to bullwork.com slash events. You can get some more information. They're going to repeat that bullwork.com slash events for those paid members on subset. If you are a paid member on YouTube, go to our channel and click on the membership tab at the bottom. There's a post with all the details on the sale. Again, if you are a paid member for YouTube, you go to our membership, you go to our channel, click on the membership tab. And at the bottom, there's a post for all the details on the sale. This is the good fight tour. Columbia, South Carolina, October 16th, Charlotte, North Carolina, October 18th, and Atlanta, Georgia, October 20th. Okay. If people come to the tour, will they be able to wear that cool green hat or buy that cool green hat you were wearing in the ad? Is that new merch of ours? I haven't seen that one before.

29:43I got all the hats back there. Yeah, I'd seen most of them, but like that green one. The green one speaks to me. I like that little one. The green one's new. The green one's new. The green one's new, and everyone's been buzzing about it. I'm not sure I like the flat top. I kind of like a bit more of a mesh line, but people like the green one a lot. So yeah, you can wear that hat if you want, if you're on the tour, for sure. Absolutely. Okay. Brother, thank you so much for doing this for those who endured this. For those who are up near the lake of Ontario, which I'm going to continue to call Lake Ontario. I'm sorry, we didn't mean this. This was not our fault. And we apologize for that. Okay. All right. Take care, Andrew. Talk to you.