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What was the rationale to do it. Was it in the name of accuracy? Does it further US national interests or have any other benefit?
by throwaway5752 2y ago
What was the rationale to do it. Was it in the name of accuracy? Does it further US national interests or have any other benefit?
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoshock-and-awe presidency. Create just enough chaos over meaningless things to help distract people from higher impact legislation (and to slow down court opposition to them, by keeping the courts busy dealing with other nonsense)
- throwaway5752 2y agoAnd it has the benefit (depending on perspective) of further weakening the US by harming diplomatic relationships with the two nations with contiguous borders. Canadian statehood and renaming the Gulf of Mexico were never brought up during the campaign. These actions serve no interest other than to antagonize American allies. They weaken the security posture of the United States, and that is ultimately the point, like soon to be DNI Gabbard.
- xp84 2y agoI personally think ALL of his Canada BS is mental, so, no arguments there. But what right does Mexico have to object to what we call a body of water? He's not renaming what we'll call Mexico itself. These things serve a real purpose which is to troll the easily offended. In that, it's a huge success, as every breath wasted whingeing about this harmless renaming is one that isn't used to ask good questions like "Why fight a trade war with Canada instead of asking why we even have free trade with a country (Mexico) whose wages are so low that it promotes the gutting of American industry." That would be a good question to ask Trump. We should have a bilateral trade deal with Canada, which would strengthen both countries, and cut Mexico out of it. But all this has distracted from how poorly he's executing his tariff strategy.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoI'm just here hoping that the billionaires can get a little richer while no one's paying attention.
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoIf they were doing something cool with the money, great! But seems like it just gets funneled into yachts and converting perfectly good Hawaiian real estate to doomsday bunkers
- hypothesis 2y agoAt least one guy is/was trying to get to Mars or something, potentially spending us all in the process…
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y agoSo, no, no national security benefits, no other benefits.
- inverted_flag 2y agoRed meat for Trump’s base.
- breadwinner 2y agoVanity of course. Same reason we want Canada and Greenland. Makes us look bigger on a map. Some people think it is because of minerals or national security and so on. But to a narcissist, vanity trumps everything.
- floydnoel 2y agoso far as I can tell, nobody here has stated the real reason that I've heard from conservative circles. Which makes sense, probably very few on this site would ever encounter them. but anyway, what i heard was that former president passed a bunch of EO's banning all future oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. I guess the easiest way to invalidate them was the rename the Gulf.