President Donald Trump’s “Lake America” rebrand may be making waves in the White House, but apparently not with the American public, according to CNN’s data guru.
Harry Enten, the network’s chief data analyst, revealed on Friday just how badly the president’s push to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” is going over with the public.
Trump, 80, signed an executive order amid his escalating feud and trade war with Canada. “Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade,” Trump declared, as he ordered the Interior Department to update the Geographic Names Information System and adopt his newly invented moniker across the federal government.
Citing Google search data, Enten found that people in all 50 states are still searching for “Lake Ontario” more than “Lake America.”
“Americans are, simply put, not convinced,” Enten said. “You could see it right here. I mean, just look to Google. I think this gives the game away. Are Americans actually calling Lake Ontario Lake America? No! Searched more on Google in the last day: in all 50 states, all of them, Lake Ontario–more people search for Lake Ontario than Lake America, where it was 0-0-0-0 states in which more people searched for Lake America than Lake Ontario.”
Trump said he had been thinking about the rebrand for some time.
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” the president said.
His executive order gives the Interior Department 30 days to update the name change.
The aging president pulled a similar move on the first day of his second term last January, signing an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Mexico pushed back against the change, arguing that the U.S. doesn’t have the authority to alter the name of a shared body of international water.
“Remember, he wanted to make the Gulf of Mexico, ‘Gulf of America?’” Enten reminded viewers.
“Searched more on Google in the last year: ‘Gulf of Mexico,’ all 50 states—all 50 states. So it’s not just after one day. It is after a year in which more Americans have been searching the Gulf of Mexico than the Gulf of America. Again, it’s the 0-0-0. And we actually have polling on that because the net approval rating for that change was 35 points underwater, deep into the Gulf of Mexico.”
Enten added: “This name-changing stuff, simply put, it doesn’t work with the American people.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
Trump’s executive order followed trade talks between the U.S. and Canada that collapsed last week. The president slapped 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Next month, Canada is hitting back with “dollar for dollar” counter tariffs.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his country will not be adopting Trump’s made-up name. In a post on X, he pointed out that the name Lake Ontario has survived for more than four centuries, and predates the founding of both Canada and the United States.
“The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,’” Carney wrote on X, referring to the smallest of the Great Lakes. “The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.”
“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” Carney continued, using the proper term for the name of a body of water while making a dig at Trump’s flip-flopping policies and his makeover of national landmarks since his return to the White House to the White House last January.
Carney added: “Canadian women and men also know that things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario—today and forever.”
