(Dobbs) If It Were Any Other President, We’d Know He Was Kidding“We have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean.”
Could there be anyone more petty than Donald Trump? He’s got our nation stuck in a war against Iran with no obvious way out. The trouble is, between Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz and its apparent capacity to outlast the United States, it is a war in which the U.S. can count more losses than gains, and as measured by the goals he has erratically laid out, more failures than triumphs. He also is stuck with a promise about the war in Ukraine that he made during his campaign, “I will get it settled before I even become president.” The trouble is, he is president and it isn’t settled. He has been back in the Oval Office for 584 days (or less, if you count his 129 days playing golf, according to “Trump Golf Track”), and the war isn’t settled. To the contrary, Trump’s bromantic partner Vladimir Putin has stepped up his brutal bombardments and the civilian death toll in Ukraine has soared. But what does our president do with his time? He renames things. Having been shot down in his egotistical pursuit to rename “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” as “The John F. Kennedy and The Donald J. Trump Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” last week he tried again, insisting on adding his name on the marble wall to read, “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts restored and renovated by President Donald J. Trump.” For all we know, since tarps have covered the wall ever since a federal judge said the first Kennedy-Trump inscription had to come down, he’s already done it. And now, Lake Ontario. Trump said the other day after his trade war with Canada blew up in his face when Prime Minister Mark Carney punched back as hard as he’d been punched (and the premier of the Ontario province Doug Ford told Trump to “kiss my ass”), he “might” rename Lake Ontario. Today— in his mind, if not in the Canadians’ minds or for that matter, many Americans’— he renamed Lake Ontario as “Lake America.” Shades of the Gulf of Mexico, which on his first day back in office he renamed the Gulf of America. Most countries just ignored it. Today in the Oval Office, the president signed an executive order— the 276th of his second term by latest count— to make the “Lake America” change, “effective immediately.” He accompanied the order with a declaration that “the Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They’re nasty people.” To revive an old cliché, it takes one to know one. He told reporters, “‘Lake of America’ was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. We have a gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean. So, maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.” If it were any other president, we’d know he was kidding. But this guy doesn’t kid. A natural disaster has ravaged the border between Nepal and China. Americans are among the hundreds dead and more than a thousand missing, and those numbers undoubtedly will rise. ICE agents are arresting and deporting immigrants with papers that show they have permission to live and work here, some of them even wives and children related to U.S. servicemen who have risked their lives for this country in the Middle East. And of course thanks to the incompetence of Trump and his cabal, the cost of living continues to hurt Americans who live on a shoestring. But Trump’s into renaming things to feed his ego and excite his base. Could there be anyone more selfish, anyone more misguided, anyone more petty? © 2026 Greg Dobbs |