Ever since President-elect Donald Trump won re-election in what feels like a lifetime ago, his plans for his second term have increasingly leaned more and more to the absurd.
He quipped that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state, that America should retake the Panama Canal and that we should buy Greenland from Denmark. During a news conference this week, Trump wouldn’t rule out using military action to accomplish the latter two.
Also during that presser, the president-elect may have proposed perhaps his silliest plan for office: To rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Right behind him for calls to rename the gulf was Marjorie Taylor Greene, the right-wing firebrand U.S. House representative who hails from North Georgia.
“President Trump’s second term is off to a GREAT start,” Greene said in a social media post following the news conference. “I’ll be introducing legislation ASAP to officially change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to its rightful name, the Gulf of America!”
Beyond the racist nativism at the core of this proposal – it is believed that the gulf was named after the indigenous city of “Mexico” – renaming the Gulf of Mexico, a name held for over four centuries, to the Gulf of America is so absurd you would think the announcement were a satire piece from The Onion.