President Donald Trump is escalating his trade war against Canada, moving to rename a Great Lake after a Canadian official pushed back against his steep tariffs.
But Trump’s latest attempt to make a statement against America’s northern neighbor quickly became a statement of another kind.
The White House posted an AI-generated map of the U.S. on Tuesday to promote Trump’s proposed “Lake America” rebranding. But critics quickly noticed something was seriously off.
The map is riddled with errors. The most eye-popping blunder places Washington, D.C., in eastern North Carolina, south of Virginia Beach. It also marks the capital with an unrecognizable building.
Washington actually sits between Maryland and Virginia.
The map also shows the Gulf of Mexico renamed the Gulf of America. Trump attempted that rebranding right after retaking the presidency in January 2025. It hasn’t stuck, especially after The Associated Press refused to change the name in its prestigious stylebook.
The botched map, apparently made of Legos, also shows Delaware as Maryland and labels New Jersey as Delaware. Connecticut sits below Trump’s hometown of New York. The map even leaves New York landlocked instead of showing its shorelines.
But that’s not all. The map shows Rhode Island as a tiny slice while Massachusetts’ coastline is squeezed out by a huge New Hampshire.
Social media erupted in ridicule, mocking the Trump administration over its cartographic ineptitude.
“How much drinking water did you idiots use up just to put DC and NJ in the wrong places?” The Lincoln Project wondered.
Others piled on. “Bro I straight up didn’t realize that DC is on the northern coast of NC.”
X user Joe Flood proclaimed, “Even your AI slop sucks.”
This commenter may have said it best. “The US Government has become the laughing stock of the world. It’s embarrassing.”
The map isn’t the latest salvo Trump has fired at Canada after trade talks collapsed on Aug. 21. On Thursday, Trump signed an executive renaming the body of water Lake America.
Trump has been raging against one of the longest and closest U.S. allies since Canadian officials walked away from negotiations over Trump’s threats to impose tariff hikes of 50 percent.
Prime Minister Mark Carney called the U.S. proposal “a bad deal” for his country, accusing the U.S. of “an attack” on Canada at a press conference. He promised retaliatory tariffs “dollar-for-dollar.”
Carney said Canadian officials had been negotiating in good faith, but that the U.S. “asked too much and offered too little, CBS News reported.
“The new U.S. tariffs are designed to hurt us and divide us. They’re a miscalculation,” Carney said.
New 50 percent tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian goods went into effect Saturday after weeks of negotiations broke down the night before. Those goods include building materials, liquors, some kinds of clothing and hockey sticks.
Canada announced retaliatory taxes on U.S. goods beginning on Sept. 8, including new levies on steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics.
But Trump really became enraged when Ontario Premier Doug Ford weighed in on the trade tussle.
Ford told CTV on Monday that Trump “can kiss my a–” and threatened to cut off Canadian-generated power to the United States, according to Mediate.
Trump responded with a post on his Truth Social platform.
“Lots of ‘bluster’ from Doug Ford, who is the Premier of the Canadian Province of Ontario, but who is better known as the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford.”
Trump quickly went after Ford, prompting his decision to rename the Great Lake.
