Trump floats renaming Strait of Hormuz the ‘Trump Strait’

President Donald Trump on Wednesday floated renaming the Strait of Hormuz — the central point of contention in the ongoing war against Iran that the U.S. and Israel started — after himself.

The proposal via a Truth Social post came less than a week after Trump, who is locked in an intensifying feud with Canada, signed an executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”

“Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT???” Trump wrote in the post Wednesday morning.

“Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” he wrote.

It was not immediately clear how the president would attempt to implement a name change for the strait, which is not near the U.S.

The order renaming Lake Ontario directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and his department to update the Geographic Names Information System with the new name. Canada rejected the change, though Google and Apple have recently updated their maps.

Early in his second presidential term, Trump also declared he was renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, a change also rejected by Mexico and other international counterparts. The U.S. borders Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico, both of which have had their names for centuries.

It was also not immediately clear if Trump was serious about the latest plan to try to change the name of an international geographical feature.

Asked at the White House on Wednesday afternoon if he really intended to rename the strait, Trump suggested he did not.

“No, no … it was just thrown out there,” Trump said.

Trump and his administration have repeatedly insisted that Iran has lost control over the strait, which carried one-fifth of the world’s oil trade before the war began in late February.

But transits through the waterway remain far below prewar levels, and ship trackers say they have dropped further in recent days, as military strikes in the region have resumed following a weekslong hiatus.

The Trump administration asserts that total oil exports from the region are now higher than they were before the war began, if the tally includes Saudi Arabia’s and the United Arab Emirate’s pipelines that bypass Hormuz.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC on Wednesday that more than 17 million barrels of oil transited the strait on Monday, a wartime record. Around 20 million barrels per day of crude and products passed through the strait before the conflict started on Feb. 28.