Trump floats a ‘Trump Strait’ and says the Atlantic becomes the American Ocean on Monday

On Wednesday the Atlantic got a pardon. By Thursday it had been revoked.

In Clemson, Trump had ruled “let’s keep it the Atlantic Ocean.” A night later in Sioux City, the renaming tour was back on. He warmed up with a detour, “if you were in Arizona, if you were in New America, what a good name,” then ran through his greatest hits: the Gulf of America, then “a beautiful lake,” and “we now call that Lake America.” Then a new one: “I’m thinking about calling the strait, the Hormuz Strait, the Trump Strait.” He wondered aloud how Abdul El-Sayed, a Senate candidate in Michigan, “would feel about that.”

Rivers got a reprieve. “The two that I really like are the Mississippi and the Hudson. And I don’t have the courage to do it, so I think they’re safe.” Oceans did not. He tried “the Ocean of the Americas” (“It’s too long”), landed on “the American Ocean,” and then announced it: “I’m pleased to announce that on Monday morning we’ll be changing the name of the Atlantic Ocean to the American Ocean.”

Then, as at Clemson, he brought up Google’s Sundar Pichai. Trump says he sent Sundar a picture of the Atlantic labelled the American Ocean, and Sundar called back to say “sir, this has to stop.” As before, Trump’s account of the call is the only one we have. Sundar sounds like a man who’s starting to screen his calls.