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Speaking at an event in South Carolina on Thursday, Trump said people in his administration had initially found the idea amusing when he suggested changing the Gulf of Mexico's name. He added that officials later pointed out that the water body had been known by that name for 350 years.
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Trump defended the decision by arguing that the US had a much larger share of the Gulf's coastline. “We have 93% of the, as we say, the real estate business frontage. We have 93%, they have seven,” he said, explaining his reason for the change.
Drawing a parallel with the proposed renaming of other water bodies, Trump joked about how Arab countries might react if the Strait of Hormuz were named after him.
"I think let's keep it the Atlantic Ocean, right? Pacific Ocean—we're going to call it the American Ocean. How do you think Europe, how do you think Europe would feel? Do you think they'd like that?" the US President said.
“We changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico. Why can't we change the name of the...” he said.
He recounted how he signed orders to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America and the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.
He told the crowd how he had been looking for a river to rename, including possibly the Hudson River or the Mississippi, but said he was focused more on renaming either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.
“I’m not going to put either Trump or America on any other ocean,” he said.