Hillary Clinton has weighed in on President Donald Trump’s decision to rename Lake Ontario, and she is not happy about it.
In a social media post Thursday, the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee responded to Trump’s executive order changing the lake’s name to Lake America with a simple, pointed message: “It’s Lake Ontario.”
As of Friday morning, comments on her X post were turned off, according to Breitbart News.
Trump signed the executive order Thursday, directing Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to update the lake’s name in the Geographic Names Information Service, the federal database for official geographic names. The move is part of a broader pattern of the president renaming prominent geographic features, following his earlier decision to designate the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
When asked what message the name change sent to Canada, Trump said there was “no message” intended for America’s northern neighbor—but then added that Canada has long been “ripping” the United States off.
The renaming comes amid escalating trade tensions between the two countries, following the collapse of a trade deal that had been under negotiation. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer characterized Canada’s failure to finalize the agreement as a “missed opportunity.”
“Canada declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week,” Greer said in a statement. “Despite the U.S. offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada upended the careful balance reached in the past days. This is a missed opportunity for Canada to partner with the U.S.”
In a video posted ahead of the executive order, Trump displayed a map of Lake Ontario, noting that the lake spans both Canada and the United States. “But we’re gonna make a little change,” he said, before crossing out “Lake Ontario” and writing “Lake America” on the map.
“And all it takes is a good pen and some intelligence,” Trump said in the video, before adding: “So now we have a lake, and now we have a gulf because we have the Gulf of America and now we have Lake America without the ‘of.’ Thank you very much, everybody.”
Clinton’s rebuke echoes the broader Democratic criticism of Trump’s naming initiatives, which opponents have dismissed as symbolic gestures that do little to address substantive policy issues. However, Trump has framed the renamings as assertions of American pride and sovereignty.
The renaming of Lake Ontario is the latest in a series of actions by Trump that have rattled diplomatic relations with Canada, a longtime ally. The trade deal’s failure has already strained relations, and the lake’s renaming adds a symbolic layer to the tension.
It remains unclear whether the international community will recognize the new name. The Geographic Names Information Service is a U.S. government database, and Canada has given no indication it will adopt the new designation for its side of the lake.
Clinton’s post, which was brief and direct, drew immediate attention, though the decision to disable comments suggests she may have wanted to avoid the kind of online debate that often follows her statements about Trump.
As the political and diplomatic fallout continues, the lake’s name change serves as a vivid reminder of the ongoing friction between the Trump administration and its northern neighbor—and of the former secretary of state’s unwillingness to let the president’s actions go without a response.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/08/28/democrat-hillary-clinton-fumes-over-president-trump-renaming-lake-ontario-to-lake-america/