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

Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing out at the ballroom. I'm joined by Andrew Egren. I want to apologize to everyone who's tuning in a pre-warning. This is the stupidest, stupidest ballwork take that we will ever do. I hope actually it probably can get worse. The stupidest ballwork 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, 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, subscribe 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, 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 just have a night at a whole riff on the podcast. I love the Great Lakes. The first thing we should say about this is you said Trump is renaming Lake on 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, you know, 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. Various 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 math in Google Maps. That remains true. The Gulf of Mexico is, if you pull up 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 that's also not nothing, right? Oh, yeah, I mean, I remember driving through the keys shortly after the Gulf of Mexico change happened and pulling up my Google map being like, Holy shit, it actually does read Gulf of America. And 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 rigmarole when the Gulf of Mexico got changed by Trump. So things that have to change because the government's decreeing 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. Like a bunch of areas 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 forest and wildlife services up there. It just has Lake of Ontario. So that's one educational material. So you got up to textbooks, atlases, digital resources, cartography and mapping services. Look at that. That's the, that's a current government website. We're showing you Lake Ontario, right there. It's got change. OK, 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're now in a trade war with Canada that we weren't before. It kind of came out of nowhere over the weekend. No, why are we in this trade war? Why, I don't understand this. Well, it's been, remind me. I mean, yeah, 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. It 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 U.S. 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 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. But yes, this is the sort of thing. Look at the sort of 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 that we called 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 in the direct secretary of 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 state 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 down in the oval when they want to get to this? Just like, paint us a picture. I don't know, man. Like, like, Trump loves Trump's loves to rename shit. He loved 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, I 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 Strait of Hormuz is called the Strait of America now. And like, that's our big win in the Iran War. 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, what would the boss really like? Like, like, let's 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 some was probably like, you know, it's not named after the province. It's named after this, this, we're on phrase about, you know, great lake. It's just me. It's a big lake. 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 the Strait of Hormuz. Someone suggested that Kanna should respond to this by renaming it, the lake of Hormuz just to fuck with Trump. And I think Debbie Dingell sent the station name it like Natalie so that he would stop bothering him. Anyways, so we went through the cost. 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 the bill to codify it because basically Trump can order it. I believe it's the U.S. Board of Geographic names in charge of administering it, but the House wanted to codify it back in the hey days of Trump. And it was a 2000. It was going good for him. Yeah. - Well, I've got to, let's, 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 now like lags everywhere people like you can just do things remember you can you can just do things man this is awesome and I don't really see that reaction right now anyways back then it was one Marjor Taylor green this is how far we've gone Marjor 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 Democrats 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 once you talk about that yeah so this is 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 we're we're cool with you cracking down on the legal immigration and getting the border under control in these various ways there were two that were quite unpopular one was his act to pardon every rioter on January 6th obviously that's not really a surprise that 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 screen that's a very bottom thing on that graph it's like not even it's it's sort of a yawning chasm between that it's like five or ten percent more even than the J6 riot or pardons where people are like well you know that one feels I kind of have a theory about that but we I can maybe save it but but well no let me just read let me read the numbers then you give me the theory so if for those who are listening and not watching going 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 and 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 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 a 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 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 lurch into gear to implement it to put it into 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 uh what's happening here we're doing what now what what's getting renamed you know these these bodies of water that have been this way our 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 gonna be worse now because back then there wasn't like we were in a war with around and the cost of living stuff had not been lingering for months now it just looks like he's totally out of touch he's lost 40% of the approval that he had then he was north of 50 uh you know 55% approval in some of these polls right around this time he's in the mid 30s now so it's uh it's a it's a far far more hostile picture in terms of public opinion of the president oh yeah and it just reinforces the image that he's both out of touching out of ideas and flailing pretty badly against the Canadians of all people the fucking Canadians speaking of uh he's quite angry with them here's him talking about how badly Canada has treated us from doing things like this towards America's allies instead of um doing things that well they have the Canadian officials have treated us very badly they're nasty people they charge our farmers 400% tariffs they've been doing it for a long time and I had them figured out on my first term and I did some pretty strong things and had it getting pretty good and then the election was written 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 she coming in a couple of weeks uh we have a lot of we deal with a lot of people people they oftentimes they'll ask me who's the worst to deal with on trade and I said that's easy Canada they are the worst to trade and they they feel entitled and just we can't have that fucking hell they're so entitled man yeah up in Canadians hey we we we have a few that we know and uh I'm gonna I'm not gonna 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 you know here he's a trans you didn't 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 in Mexico in his first term that he then blew up I mean this there's no logic to this man's out of his means out of his element I don't know 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 like early 2017 that was all about like you know the Trump hotel White House and you know sketching these silly futures of like Donald Trump hobnobbing around with Xi Jinping to you know kibbits about how how much they both hate doing trade with Canada I mean like 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 Fantasia joke material type stuff that's true reality today yeah it's true if they'd done some SNS get where Trump was sitting around like renaming things on the map and talking about how awful Canadians were that this is just the absurd no one's gonna buy it but we're here we're fucking here we gotta go to a little bit of a break but on the other side of this we're gonna be talking about some more serious stuff because there are there 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 all the stuff happening in Iran but we'll get to that on the other side of this commercial break message is 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 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I've had good talk for when he's 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 a bad spot. I think it's pretty much established fact now that we have critical missile shortages due to Iran. And of course, there's no real resolution on the horizon for what's happening in Iran. So like, we're just in this kind of bad stasis 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, you know, to throw throw more money at this problem. But even under the budget request that the 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 most of these missiles that we have shortages of are of two sorts. It's like the the AP story this morning was primarily talking about these these Patriot interceptors, you know, defensive missiles basically if 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. We would still have a lot of a lot of, you know, punch back capability that which is still the main thing that would deter Russia from from making a strike like this is that we could still sort of rain hell down in response. But what what we would not be able to do nearly as well as 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 was whether those those Russian strikes with minimal damage to infrastructure and civilian life. So it's it's 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 kind of unnerving and vulnerable place than we would otherwise been. Yeah, I mean, we've invested in carbon amount of resources, global reputation, weapons and so on in Iran for this kind of 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 its war on Russia. And 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 is that the Iranians and in the Russians are close to striking a nuclear deal. Trump has asked about that as well. Let's play that video. 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 in the White House that these countries are taking economic de-day seriously that they're going to continue doing business with Iran despite the war on Iran and now 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 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. We have control and we have the blockade. Iran's not getting anything, nothing is going through, not one ship is going through. So do you punish Putin or Russia if they can take advantage of this? 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. Yeah. What was the first one? No, but also it wasn't like the average, about 140 or so prior to the war. Yeah, I was north of 100, I don't remember exactly, but I have not been, I have refreshed the Hormuz, you know, ship tracker. How do you do that? You have that? You have that on your webpage? I had over there whenever I write about it, which is sporadically, but no, I mean, 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 huge sigh of relief of all time that the president is correct. Finally, that the strait of hormones is open, gas prices would fall, we would all go home and be happy. And that's not where we are, it's not where we are, it's not the situation we're in. It is kind of 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, and also it's not implemented right away, but he's just going absolutely him on Canada. Yeah, and it totally gives away the game where it's like, the whole point of it is secondary 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. That's like, it's a giant step up, and that's supposedly what makes it economic d-day, right? 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 immediately responds, like, well, you know, I think they've been pretty good, you know, and like, so there's no, there's nothing new, there's no, there's no teeth in it at all. It's not it. It's not it. 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 a harder one against you. But it's like the secondary sanctions issue, I don't 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 of humiliations 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 his 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 where it war with Iran. But no, it's like we can't get anything new even out of Russia, 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 all that we have to show for it is that Putin knows that Trump is a stew 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 supposed to end on day one and now he's gonna do a 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 like America shit because we're gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna be fun. It's gonna be fun. No, it's not. No, no, no, the re-renaming. The re-renaming. Okay. Well, if you're in the comment section, you know, if you're in the comment section, throw out some ideas of both predictions of things that Trump will now move on to because yeah, at one point, he did 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 realistically, in the comments, what would he realistically rename? And then, too, 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 gonna be at 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. We're calling it the good fight tour ticket sales for these dates are now live. This is gonna be our ramp up to the midterms. You're gonna wanna 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/events. You can get some more information, they're gonna repeat that bullwork.com/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. The 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 that you were wearing in the ad? Is that new merch of ours? I haven't seen that one before. I 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. Yeah. 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 liner, 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.