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Trump Tried to Get Google to Rename Atlantic Ocean After Him

Donald Trump admitted he called up Google’s CEO to discuss the possibility.

President Donald Trump and Google CEO Sundar Pichai speak to the media outside the White House
President Donald Trump and Google CEO Sundar Pichai speak to the media following a White House meeting on AI with tech executives, September 29.
Tierney L. Cross/The Washington Post/Bloomberg/Getty Images
President Donald Trump and Google CEO Sundar Pichai speak to the media following a White House meeting on AI with tech executives, September 29.

President Trump isn’t done trying to rename things.

The president told a rally audience in South Carolina Wednesday evening that he tried to rename the Atlantic Ocean to “Trump Ocean,” but ultimately decided against it.

“I only like two oceans, the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, I’m not going to put either Trump or America on any other ocean but these two. So, we seriously looked at the Atlantic Ocean and I called Google Maps who were really great with the lake and really great with …” Trump said, trailing off but referring to the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump said he called Google CEO Sundar Pichai and asked him, “I’m thinking of the Atlantic Ocean, can you handle it? ‘No no no, this time I’m not doing it,’ he said.”

The audience and Trump laughed.

“He said, he said, he said, ‘Oceans are different, sir. You know, they cover, they cover a lot of, they cover really a lot of countries. Please, don’t ask us to do that.’ So I’ll probably pass. Should I pass it? I think let’s keep it the Atlantic Ocean,” Trump said.

Trump’s ego knows no bounds if he was seriously considering having Google change the name of the Atlantic Ocean. He has signed executive orders changing the names of the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario to the Gulf of America and Lake America, respectively. He’s proposed renaming the Strait of Hormuz to “Trump Strait,” and earlier this week again mused about renaming New Mexico to “New America.” Meanwhile, the economy is suffering as a result of his failed policies and ill-advised war with Iran, and the Republican Party is facing heavy losses in November’s midterm elections.

Hegseth’s Staff Destroyed Priceless Artifact From Former President

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s staff damaged a globe that belonged to former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth walks down a set of stairs.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s staff badly damaged former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s globe while moving it into his office.

The globe, which is now housed in the Pentagon, dates back to the 1930s and was reportedly used by Eisenhower during World War II, making it an extremely delicate artifact that needed to be handled with care. But a task that should have been delegated to archivists or museum professionals was instead handled by Hegseth’s own staff, who dropped the globe when they tried to move it to the defense secretary’s office early this year, The Washington Post reported.

That resulted in a gash “several inches wide” in the shell near Antarctica.

An Army spokesperson admitted to the damage, saying the globe was “detached from the metal mounting that allows it to rotate.”

Hegseth’s office did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.

One anonymous source attributed the gaffe to an “apparent lack of patience.” The mistake has become a source of humor both inside and outside the Pentagon, as the event is a perfect microcosm for the hypermasculine move-fast-break-things mentality that Hegseth has brought to the Defense Department—or the “War Department,” as he insists on calling it.

“Kind of a perfect metaphor for Hegseth’s entire tenure at DOD. Stupid, impulsive, driven by vanity and the result is destruction,” liberal podcaster Tommy Vietor wrote online.

“Hegseth wants an Eisenhower totem to be like Ike, brilliant in war and peace,” retired brigadier general and former West Point military history professor Ty Seidule told the Post. “Hegseth is no Ike. The globe won’t give him Ike’s attributes of humility, intellect and judgment.”

Dan Lamothe @DanLamothe A group dispatched by Hegseth's team in February attempted to move the historic globe, said to be used by Eisenhower during World War II. They lifted it from its home in an Army office in the Pentagon ... and dropped it. (photo of damaged globe with small pieces on the floor)

Trump Admits He Made Huge Concession to Free American in Russia

Donald Trump claimed he hadn’t given up anything to secure the release of Stephen Hubbard from Russian prison—and then immediately admitted he actually had.

Donald Trump speaks to reporters outside the White House
Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Moments after declaring that the U.S. “gave nothing” to Russia in exchange for the release of imprisoned American Stephen Hubbard, Donald Trump revealed that we did, in fact, give something.

“So we appreciate the fact that we were able to get him. We gave nothing in exchange, which is very rare. We never give anything in exchange,” said Trump during a roundtable at the White House Wednesday.

But just moments later, Trump seemed to refer to bipartisan blowback he had faced earlier this month for striking a diesel deal with Russia and dropping America’s economic sanctions against the global superpower.

“I was in the midst of getting Stephen out of Russia and, if we did what these foolish people wanted me to do, he wouldn’t be coming out right now. He’d be in there for another 20 years,” Trump said. “So the last thing I was going to do was break up that.”

Hubbard, a retired American teacher, had lived in Ukraine for years before he was captured by Russia in the early weeks of the war. Two years later in 2024, he was convicted by a Russian court of serving as a mercenary. Hubbard was released early Wednesday after nearly five cumulative years in detention.

The 74-year-old Michigander’s release was followed by a jarringly obsequious meeting between U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which Witkoff referred to the notoriously tyrannical Russian leader as a “humanitarian.”

“You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian,” Witkoff told Putin Wednesday, responding to Hubbard’s release. “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again.”

Even Republicans had a hard time standing by the Trump envoy’s messaging. Reacting to a video of the exchange on X, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis slammed Witkoff’s descriptor as an “embarrassing and outrageous thing to say.”

“You should go back to Ukraine and ask the families of the children Putin has kidnapped and murdered whether they agree your friend Putin is a ‘humanitarian,’” Tillis wrote.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas commented that Putin is a “stone cold killer.”

But Trump wasn’t willing to join the choir. When asked to respond to Witkoff’s exchange, Trump told reporters that he didn’t want to “upset an apple cart where we’re getting close to settling a war.”

Trump Falls Asleep on Camera Again (He Also Fell Asleep Yesterday)

The president struggled to stay awake during his own roundtable on cybercrime and fraud.

President Donald Trump falls asleep as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks seated next to him at the table.
President Donald Trump falls asleep as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a roundtable in the White House on October 21.
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
President Donald Trump falls asleep as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a roundtable in the White House on October 21.

Our 80-year-old president is once again struggling to stay awake on camera.

President Trump’s eyes grew heavy during his cybercrime prevention roundtable on Thursday with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House adviser Stephen Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel.

The president’s eyes were closed while Hegseth spoke about cyberattacks, and again while Mullin spoke about child abuse videos.

This is the second time this week that Trump has used a meeting to get some shut-eye. On Tuesday, Trump slumped forward in his chair, eyes fluttering while Vice President JD Vance went on about the administration’s new “Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program.”

These on-camera naps continue as Trump claims to be in peak physical condition while traveling the country ahead of November’s midterm elections.

“You Protected Pedophiles!”: Protester Interrupts JD Vance Speech

The crowd quickly erupted in chants of “USA! USA!”

Vice President JD Vance at the podium with Todd Blanche and FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson behind him.
Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/Getty Images

Just two days after calling a protester demanding the release of the Epstein files an “illegal immigrant,” Vice President JD Vance claimed that the man who interrupted his rally for Ohio House candidate Eric Conroy on Wednesday hadn’t “showered in three months.”

“If Greg Landsman had his way, he would take our country right back to where we were four years ago,” Vance said of Conroy’s Democratic opponent. “He would raise your taxes, he would bring us back to the highest inflation in 40 years. He would invite—”

“You protected pedophiles!” a young man in a suit and a MAGA hat right behind Vance shouted. He threw the hat to the ground as the crowd began to drown him out with boos and that classic “USA” chant. He was quickly removed from the rally.

“Now that guy, he was trying to pretend to be MAGA. Do you notice how he took off his ‘Make America Great Again’ hat and threw it down? Here’s the problem, ladies and gentlemen—he told on himself. Because when he took that hat off it was very obvious that he has not washed his hair in about three months,” Vance joked, to mild applause. “And we all know that the people who haven’t washed their hair in three months, they vote for Democrats, not Republicans.”

What an odd response to someone for bringing up perhaps one of the biggest failures of Donald Trump’s second term: the botched, obscured, and incomplete rollout of the Epstein files. And does Vance really want to argue that MAGA supporters are across the board more hygienic than Democrats?

This interaction was similar to Vance’s weak North Carolina clapback on Monday, when another protester shouted, “God bless our children!” and “Release the Epstein files!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna have to amend something I said earlier. I said that we have had zero illegal border crossings in the United States of America,” Vance said with a smile, implying that the protester was not a U.S. citizen. “But one isn’t bad, right?”