Donald Trump sparks fresh backlash with wild map post rebranding whole state 'New America'
US President Donald Trump has set off yet another backlash after posting a map rebranding New Mexico as "New America" - the latest in a string of surreal name changes he has hit the US map with under his leadership.
The post landed as part of a Truth Social blitz on Sunday, with the president firing off 34 separate posts in under an hour, including a map of the southwestern US state with "Mexico" struck through by a red line and swapped for "America."
The latest bombastic post is far from Trump's first swing at rewriting the map, reports the New York Post. He already ordered the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the Gulf of America, and he did the same to Lake Ontario by rechristening it Lake America - a move widely seen as a dig at Canada to the backdrop of an escalating trade war between the two countries.
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The renaming spree dates back to a January 2025 executive order, which Trump grandly titled "Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness," which also saw Denali - North America's tallest peak - reverted to its old name, Mount McKinley, reports The Independent.
In an extraordinary war-of-words, Trump repeatedly advocated for the idea of Canada becoming America's 51st state, telling Fox News recently: "They think they're a state, but they're not a state", raising doubts as to why the US should be "subsidising" its northern neighbour.
As with Trump's previous attempts at geography rebrands, the New Mexico suggestion didn't go down well with his detractors. The group Republicans Against Trump fired back on X with a blunt: "WTF is wrong with him?"
And his present critics are not the first to challenge him. When Trump first ordered Lake Ontario's rename, mapping app MapQuest flatly refused to follow his order, posting: "We're not changing it". The stance saw the company's App Store ranking spike in response. The app's general manager, Doug Berger, said the approach mirrored what they'd done with the Gulf of Mexico rename, insisting people simply wanted an app that "keeps the names they're familiar with." Tech giants Apple and Google, though, appeared to have folded by quietly switching Lake Ontario to Lake America for US users on both platforms, just as they had with the Gulf.
However, not everyone was against the most recent rebrand attempt. Conservative commentator Eric Daugherty seemed thrilled by the New Mexico suggestion, when he posted: "This man is on a roll!"
Trump's rebranding ambitions apparently don't stop at Earth's borders, either. Minutes after the New Mexico post, he shared an image of the moon on Truth Social with the caption: "The moon is ours."
The 80-year-old has leaned hard into legacy-building throughout his second term, from the map changes to a sprawling, costly new White House ballroom, and even slapping his name across buildings in the capital, with one of the more notable additions, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, was later ordered removed by a federal judge.
Elsewhere in the same Truth Social posting barrage, Trump's face turned up grafted onto wrestling icon Hulk Hogan's body, MAGA bandana and all, digitally stitched on for the post. He also posted another on the theme of maps, showing Iran's borders reshaped into the outline of the president's own head, as the US's war with the Middle Eastern nation stretches past the six-month mark.
Despite Trump's headline-grabbing antics, the appetite of the American people doesn't seem to be matching up. A CNN poll carried out by SSRS in late July found nearly three-quarters of the American public don't think Trump's been focused enough on the issues that actually matter to them.
Topics: Donald Trump, Google Maps, Social Media
Michael D. Carroll