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President Trump has spent the year redrawing the labels on America’s map, one landmark at a time.
Since taking office he has renamed the Gulf of Mexico, declared Lake Ontario should be called “Lake America,” and this weekend floated turning New Mexico into “New America.”
Each move has drawn ridicule online, but the sharpest reply so far did not come from a domestic critic.
It came from a foreign government the White House has spent much of 2026 fighting.
An official account joins the meme war
On Sunday evening, September 6, 2026, the Iranian Embassy in Sierra Leone posted an altered map of North America on X that labeled a broad section of US territory as “South Canada” and “North Mexico.”
The caption read: “Finally, Canada and Mexico solved the world’s biggest problem.”
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The post appeared within hours of Trump’s own images on Truth Social, which showed the word “Mexico” crossed out over New Mexico and replaced with “America.”
He did not indicate whether he intended the post as a joke or as a serious proposal.
A pattern of geographic renaming
The New Mexico graphic sits alongside a run of executive actions on place names.
On his first day in office, Trump signed Executive Order 14172, “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness,” directing federal agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
He later moved to apply the same treatment to Lake Ontario, calling it “Lake America” during trade friction with Canada.
New Mexico’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, pushed back on Instagram, writing that “New Mexico’s name isn’t up for debate,” and accusing the White House of wasting time coloring on maps while her state focused on childcare, college access, and health care.
The name predates modern Mexico by more than two centuries, tracing to Spanish colonial administration in the 16th century.
Tehran’s diplomats have gone viral before
The Sierra Leone post fits a strategy Iranian missions have pursued since early 2026.
After US and Israeli strikes on Iran in late February, embassies in South Africa, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe, and Ghana began publishing pop-culture memes and satirical videos aimed at Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, France 24 reported.
In the first 50 days of the conflict, official Iranian accounts collectively gathered about 900 million views and 22 million likes, according to figures cited in the same reporting.
