The Cleveland City Council adopted a resolution Monday evening seemingly designed to mock President Donald Trump and his propensity for renaming things after either himself or the United States.
“I feel emboldened to take the extraordinary step of renaming Lake Erie as the Gulf of Cleveland today,” said Cleveland City Council member Kris Harsh, the sponsor of a resolution, during his remarks at the body’s meeting Monday, NBC News reported.
Passing by a vote of 13-1, the resolution cites “Trump’s orders to assign new names without reference to history, tradition, and acts of Congress” for having “opened the door for United States officials to rename other geography.” It also asserts that “Cleveland refuses to be left behind in the coming deluge of government renaming and rebrandings.”
On Trump, Harsh described the president during Monday’s meeting as “a man who clearly isn’t afraid to say what no one is thinking.” He also took a jab at Google and Apple for updating their maps to reflect Trump’s name changes, demanding that both companies “recognize our sovereignty.”
Google and Apple changed the names of both the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario to the new America-themed names pushed by Trump, sparking outrage in the process.
“Keep in mind, there’s a very real person in Pennsylvania right now who wants to rename it the Lake of Pennsylvania,” Harsh said during the meeting, a likely reference to Republican Pennsylvania state Rep. David Maloney, who’s launched an effort to urge Trump to rename Lake Erie. “We cannot, as Ohioans, let the Pennsylvanians get a jump on us. It’s our lake.”
NBC News noted that while the resolution “does not have the force of law” behind it and carries no enforcement mechanisms, the “satirical move poking fun at the president’s own renaming efforts” was still an officially adopted resolution, and one that Harsh mockingly championed.
“[Lake Erie is not a gulf], and I say, ‘Who cares?’” Harsh said. “Listen to me very carefully and jot this down: Words don’t matter. Words don’t matter, but the whims of powerful white men like me do.”
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