The renaming of Lake Ontario by President Donald Trump could end up drowning the reelection campaign of a Colorado congressman seeking a second term.
Republican Rep. Jeff Crank drew derisive laughter at a campaign debate for candidates in the state’s Fifth Congressional District at the Pikes Peak Center in Colorado Springs when he said he was unaware of Trump’s arbitrary decision to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America”—and he didn’t appear to care.
“Lake Ontario or Lake America?” debate moderator Ernest Luning asked both Crank and his Democratic challenger Jessica Killin at the debate hosted Thursday by KOAA News5. “The president issued an order changing the name of Lake Ontario,” Luning added.
“I’m unaware of... What’s the reference?” Crank, a former radio host, responded, triggering laughter—and groans—from the audience.
“He changed the name to Lake America this morning,” Luning told Crank.
“I don’t know. I have other more pressing issues I’m working on. Goodness,” an exasperated Crank replied.
Killin, an Army veteran, knew exactly what the moderator meant. Her answer: “Lake Ontario.”
Recent polls show the race between the two candidates as a statistical dead heat.
Trump ordered Lake Ontario renamed “Lake America” in an executive order Thursday amid the damaging trade war that he has waged against Canada. The decree has little effect other than requiring the U.S. Interior Department to alter the Geographic Names Information System so that the federal government uses Trump’s concocted name.
Americans, meanwhile, are still searching for “Lake Ontario” rather than “Lake America” on Google, according to CNN’s data guru Harry Enten.
“Americans are, simply put, not convinced,” Enten said. “Just look to Google. I think this gives the game away. Are Americans actually calling Lake Ontario Lake America? No.”
Trump, who has already changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, has said he next wants to change the name of an ocean of his choosing.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hasn’t taken Trump’s bait and started calling other Great Lakes, like Lake Michigan, Lake Canada. But he is fiercely defending Lake Ontario’s actual name. It was chosen by the Indigenous Wendat people of Quebec, and means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.”
“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,” he said in a statement.
“Canadian women and men... know that things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario—today and forever,” he added.
During Crank and Killin’s debate, the moderator also asked which name the candidates preferred: the U.S. Department of Defense, or Trump’s name, the Department of War. He later asked which name they supported for the Gulf of Mexico: its internationally recognized name, or Trump’s cooked-up label, the Gulf of America.
Crank chose the Department of War and the Gulf of America, while Killin backed the Department of Defense and the Gulf of Mexico.
