By Rachel Alexander
The left and their comrades in the MSM are whining about Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, but notice they only bring up objections, avoiding mention of the favorable reasons. The most obvious reason for the change is that “America” includes Mexico and the lower continents, too — which I haven’t read in a single fake news article. This is a far fairer name for the body of water in the center of the Western hemisphere, mostly North America, Central America, and South America.
Trump said in his executive order that it “was a crucial artery for America’s early trade and global commerce” and “a vital region for the multi-billion-dollar U.S. maritime industry,” and he declared February 9 “Gulf of America Day.”
The fake news predictably led with fake news.
A writer for The Intelligencer titled her article, “Almost Nobody Wants to Call it the ‘Gulf of America.’” She cited two very left-leaning polls, which deliberately failed to provide any context about the change to people who were polled, known as push-polls and considered shady.
If it was such an unpopular move, then why did left-leaning Google immediately comply and rename its maps, turning off comments? (however, those outside the U.S. will see both names) Why did left-leaning Axios comply? The Associated Press refused, so the Trump administration blocked their reporters from access to Air Force One and some of the White House, referring to the AP’s “commitment to misinformation.” The New York Times and The Washington Post, both considered bastions of fake news, have predictably refused to switch names.
The fake news defended its own. The Hollywood Reporter described the AP in an article about the conflict: “[T]he AP, whose influential style book is used across hundreds of news organizations and is considered by millions to be a gold standard for news writing…”
In reality, trust in the media is at an all-time low, sinking to 31% last October.
The AP instructs its reporters on which words and phrases they must use, no longer sticking to merely style but expanding into substantive Orwellian changes like requiring them to use “election denier” and “insurrection.”
The AP claimed that Trump is “regulating language used by independent media.” This is a complete farce, since the AP is nothing but independent; they act as a wing of the Democratic Party, so when Democrats control the government, it’s like Pravda was to the former Soviet Union. The AP is funded by far left organizations that are in bed with the Democratic Party. Polls consistently show that only 3% of journalists are Republicans.
On Friday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an unrelated post on X regarding some new executive orders, “The @AP was not invited.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum objected to the name change, and said she intends to send a letter to Google objecting and possibly filing a lawsuit. Mexico has territorial rights to part of the waters.
Trump also restored the name Mount McKinley to the historic mountain in Alaska, the tallest mountain in the U.S. A prospector in 1896 named it Mount McKinley after William McKinley, who was elected president that year. It had been casually known by natives prior to that as Denali. In 2015, the Obama administration officially changed the name to Denali, which means “the high one” in the Koyukon language. Trump’s executive order stated that other landmarks in Alaska will be renamed “to honor the history and culture of the Alaskan people.”
The AP hypocritically said it would resume calling the mountain McKinley, claiming it was because the peak was located entirely within the U.S. Obviously, if the AP thought Trump had renamed the mountain to something it had found offensive, they would have come up with some other objection.
A second reason supportive of the name changes is that historical places have been renamed many times throughout history — something else omitted from almost every MSM article I found except two.
The left has been frantically renaming historic American sites in recent years to eliminate any memory of political leaders associated with the Confederacy, owning slaves, etc. It’s understandable since the Democratic Party was the party of slavery, but considering George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were revered founding fathers, it's a bit of a stretch.
Instead of providing important context like that, the MSM took to insulting the executive order. The Atlantic, which is no longer taken seriously itself, said,
“The executive order rechristening the body of water known internationally as the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ is not an easy document to take seriously. Portions of it read like a child’s research paper.”
The article also embarrassingly referred to the disgraced AP as “one of the world’s premier news-gathering organizations.”
The article also embarrassingly referred to the disgraced AP as “one of the world’s premier news-gathering organizations.”
However, The Atlantic did fairly point out that the AP is being hypocritical. “If the AP is going to follow the federal government’s legally valid naming conventions, then it should go along with ‘Gulf of America’ by default, no matter how stupid it sounds.” The magazine noted that the name Mexico was given to the area by Spanish conquistadors. “Why, indeed, should modern society continue to honor a name imposed by Spanish conquistadors?”
The left, which treats people as groups – rather than individuals as we do on the right – always finds itself in conflicts when those special interests collide. The article added, “What Americans call the ‘Rio Grande,’ Mexicans call the ‘Rio Bravo.’ This has not caused any kind of breakdown of the collective geographic imagination.”
And finally, the left rails against conservatives who refuse to call transgenders by their newly chosen opposite gender names, condemning it as “dead naming,” but has no problem dead naming these landmarks.
Rachel Alexander is a conservative commentator, and the Editor of The Intellectual Conservative. A recovering attorney, she frequently appears on TV & News Radio, previously served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Arizona and Special Assistant/Deputy County Attorney for the Maricopa County (Phoenix) Attorney’s Office, and was once a corporate attorney for Go Daddy Software.
