The president Donald Trump once again publicly mocked his Mexican counterpart Claudia Sheinbaum during an event with members of the U.S. Navy at the port of Baltimore, Maryland, where he jokingly reenacted a supposed phone call he would have received from the leader when he announced the name change of the Gulf of Mexico.
According to Trump's account shared by EFE, Sheinbaum allegedly reached out to plead with him not to move forward with the measure: «It was a bit of a complicated moment when I did that. I received a call from the president of Mexico. She was a very nice woman, beautiful, with a lovely voice, and she said to me: 'No, no, Mr. President. Please, please tell me it’s not true.'»
Trump completed the anecdote by imitating his own response to the official: "I'm sorry, ma'am. That's how it is. We changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. That's the way it is. I'm sorry."
The version of that conversation comes exclusively from the account of the Republican leader; there is no independent confirmation that Sheinbaum said those words or that the call occurred as described.
This is not the first time Trump has used this anecdote in public. On October 2, during an event at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, he had already recounted a similar version, adding that at first, he had considered not answering the phone. The Baltimore episode is, therefore, a repetition and amplification of a jest that the president has incorporated into his usual repertoire of speeches.
To justify the name change, Trump stated that "the United States has 93% of the coastline" of the gulf, while Mexico has only 7%. "I never thought it made sense to call it the Gulf of Mexico," he argued.
However, that figure is false. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico (INEGI) and other sources, Mexico has approximately 3,294 kilometers of coastline in the gulf compared to 2,626 kilometers of the United States, representing 55.7% and 44.3% of the coastline shared between both countries, respectively.
The name change was ordered by Trump through Executive Order 14172, signed on January 20, 2025, the same day as his inauguration. The measure instructs U.S. federal agencies to use "Gulf of America" in official documents and maps, but does not modify the international designation or sovereignty over the waters.
Sheinbaum has repeatedly rejected the new name, asserting that the entire world still refers to it as the Gulf of Mexico. The leader even joked about the possibility of calling the United States "Mexican America" in response to Trump's decision.
Tensions between the two leaders escalated last September when Trump shared a controversial map in which Cuba, Mexico, and Canada appeared under the American flag on Truth Social. Sheinbaum firmly responded, "In the month of our national pride, we reaffirm that Mexico is not and will not be a colony or protectorate of any foreign country."
Public mockery of foreign leaders has become a hallmark of Trump's political style, who has imitated French President Emmanuel Macron with a French accent, compared British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to appeaser Chamberlain, and calls Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney "governor," following a pattern of disparagement that recurs with various international interlocutors.
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