Others say they prefer the name “Gulf of Texas.”
President-elect Donald Trump says he will seek to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” prompting a slew of responses on social media.
In a news conference Tuesday, Trump said the “Gulf of America” is the rightful name to the body of water that borders Texas, Louisiana and other Southern U.S. states to the north and Mexico to the south.
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. What a beautiful name,” Trump said from his club in Mar-a-Lago in Florida, which also borders the gulf. “And it’s appropriate. It’s appropriate. And Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country.”
Within minutes, social media responded to Trump’s plan with a mixture of excitement, horror and humor.
Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, a U.S. representative and close Trump ally, announced her support for Trump’s name-change plan on X.
“I’ll be introducing legislation ASAP to officially change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to its rightful name, the Gulf of America!” Greene said.
Many commenters, including Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, suggested an alternative. “I think ‘Gulf of Texas’ has a nice ring to it,” Miller wrote on X.
Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare, a Republican, also chimed in on X: “Gulf of America has a nice ring to it. Gulf of Texas sounds even better!” O’Hare wrote.
Covering 218,000 square miles, the Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest and most important bodies of water in North America. Half of the U.S. petroleum refining and natural gas processing capacity is located along the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The body of water has been called the Gulf of Mexico for more than four centuries, believed to have been taken from a Native American city of “Mexico.”
Trump has clashed with the Mexico over a number of issues, including border security and tariffs on imported goods. While running for his first presidency, he pledged to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it. The U.S. ultimately constructed or refurbished about 450 miles of wall during his first term.
This is not the first time the idea of changing the name of the gulf has emerged. In 2012, a member of the Mississippi Legislature proposed a bill to rename portions of the gulf that touch that state’s beaches “Gulf of America,” a move the bill’s author later referred to as a “joke.” That bill, which was referred to a committee, did not pass.
Two years earlier, comedian Stephen Colbert had joked on his show that, following the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it should be renamed “Gulf of America” because, “We broke it, we bought it.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
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