Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday, the president said he had called Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, to ask whether the company could “handle” his proposal.
“I only like two oceans: the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. I’m not going to put either Trump or America on any other ocean but these two. So we seriously looked at the Atlantic Ocean, and I called Google Maps, who were really great with the lake … They’re still rattled from the Gulf. I said: ‘Sundar, I’m thinking of the Atlantic Ocean,’” Trump said.
Trump referenced his previous executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, as well as his push to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America amid a trade feud between the US and Canada, for which he also signed an executive order requiring US federal agencies to use his new moniker.
According to Trump, Pichai rejected the latest proposal. Trump described the Google CEO’s response by saying, “No, no, no. This time I’m not doing it … Oceans are different, sir. They cover … a lot of countries. Please don’t ask us to do that.”
“So I’ll probably pass. Should I pass it?” Trump said, adding: “I think let’s keep it the Atlantic Ocean.”
It’s definitely not the first or only fuckery with maps either. India has them display Kashmir as part of India, while other regions show it as disputed. If a nation is important enough to Google, they’ll do whatever you want to keep that ad money rolling in.