Three weeks into his gubernatorial campaign, and failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is already pathetically parroting Donald Trump’s name-changing stunt.
During an address to the Lucas County Republican Party last week, Ramaswamy pitched changing the name of one of the Great Lakes, while boasting about Ohio’s natural resources.
“I like what President Trump’s done with the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of America,” Ramaswamy said to some applause and laughter. “Anybody think if there’s a Lake Michigan, maybe there should be a Lake Ohio around here?”
“I’m feeling that, so we’ll talk about that a little bit more as this campaign progresses,” Ramawamy continued.
Lake Erie runs across Ohio’s northern border, as well as Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan—and Ontario’s southern border, a Canadian territory that is not feeling so friendly toward the U.S. right now.
A campaign spokesperson told the Cincinnati Enquirer that Ramaswamy was only joking about pursuing a new name for Lake Erie. “The audience understood it was a joke. Perhaps the media will someday get a sense of humor,” the spokesperson said. “Vivek is focused on real policies to Make Ohio Great Again.”
And yet, he seems primarily interested in sucking up to Trump, who saw Ramaswamy banished back to the Midwest after he was surreptitiously dismissed as Elon Musk’s co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Last month, Trump endorsed Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial run in the state that was the epicenter of the president’s outlandish and racist claims about immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets on the campaign trail. Ramaswamy is currently running against Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, and former Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton, a Democrat.
Even if Ramaswamy was only joking, it’s unclear just how far Trump’s acolytes will go to pay tribute to their president. And while many may have hoped that Trump was only joking about changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, that’s exactly what he did on his first day in office.
The White House has attempted to enforce the use of this alternative name, cracking down on publications that do not comply with their shared delusion.
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