Donald Trump said at a Saturday evening rally in Clarksville, Tennessee that he wants to rename an ocean before he leaves office in 2028. He called it Trump Ocean or Ocean of the Americas and said the idea could apply to either the Atlantic or the Pacific.
He tied the idea to a river as well. In the same remarks, Trump said he did not want to change the Hudson River and said he would not change the Mississippi River either, drawing a line around two waterways while leaving one ocean choice unresolved.
Clarksville, Tennessee rally
Trump told the crowd, “We’ve got the Gulf, we’ve got a beautiful lake, and now somebody said, ‘You need a river.’” He then added, “So we need a river and we need an ocean. So I was thinking either the Atlantic or the Pacific. We call it Trump Ocean, or Ocean of the Americas. Something like that.”
He also said, “No, before I get out, I think we should have an ocean and we need a great river. Now, I’m not changing the name of the Mississippi. I love Mis. we won that state by so much.” The remarks put the ocean choice and the river choice together, but only the river names were ruled out.
Hudson River and Mississippi River
Trump said, “I don’t want to change the name of the Hudson River. Henry Hudson, he did a good job sailing up that sucker a long time ago.” He paired that with his Mississippi comment, keeping those names in place while describing the broader renaming push.
The setting matters because Trump has already used similar naming changes before. Early in his second term, he rebranded the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and this year he changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America after a Canada-USA trade deal collapsed at the last minute.
Trump Ocean and Lake America
That pattern continued in August, when Trump posted an AI video of himself kicking over a sign reading “Lake Ontario.” The AI version of Trump then celebrated the move by doing his YMCA dance.
For now, the practical question is simple: Trump has named two oceans as possibilities, but he has not chosen between them. The Hudson River and Mississippi River are out of the line of fire; the ocean name is the part he left open.
