SANTA FE, NEW AMERICA, FORMERLY KNOWN AS NEW MEXICO (The Daily Whatever Press)—The president of the United States would like the more than 2 million people of New Mexico to know that the name of their home is fucking wrong, and he’d like it fixed immediately. If they won’t do it, he’ll resort to using that magic Sharpie that moved a hurricane (it didn’t.)
“New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America,” Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Monday afternoon, 15 days before a midterm election his party is sweating through its golf shirt about. Then he did the thing he does best, which is sell a miracle. The new name, he promised, would “add great value and prestige to the State!” Home values and incomes would rise. Residents would be “even prouder while saluting our beautiful American Flag!” And—my favorite part—“Maybe even the Crooked Elections, that New Mexico is known for, would become honest again!”
One rebrand, four miracles. Somebody get this man a 2 a.m. infomercial slot and a set of Ginsu knives.
This is his third lap around this particular track. In September he posted a map with “Mexico” crossed out in red—the White House reposted it like a proud parent—plus an AI video of himself slapping “America” over a Welcome to New Mexico sign while doing his little dance. On October 3, he opened an endorsement video with “Hello New America—formerly known as New Mexico,” which is the most Prince thing ever said by a man with absolutely no Prince energy.
Prince turned his name into an unpronounceable symbol in 1993 to fight a record label that owned his work. He renamed himself to get his shit back. Trump keeps renaming shit that belongs to other people.
So let’s take the miracles one at a time.
Miracle number one: great value and prestige
Spanish explorers were calling this region “Nuevo México” by the 1560s, and Juan de Oñate nailed it to the map in 1598. The country of Mexico didn’t take that name until it won independence from Spain in 1821. Do the math and New Mexico’s name is roughly 223 years older than the country Trump thinks it was named after. It’s older than the United States, too, which Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham pointed out back in September.
So yes, technically, “We are not Mexico.” New Mexico got there first. In prestige terms, it’s the old money in this room, and the guy yelling at it is the new neighbor who just put gold lions at the end of his driveway.
Miracle number two: home values and incomes would rise
I adore that this man believes a better name makes property worth more, because we have actual data on what happens to home values when you put his name on something.
Between 2016 and 2019, residents of all six Trump Place buildings on Manhattan’s Upper West Side voted to pry his name off their facades. The first three dumped it after a petition from residents who objected to what he’d said about women, immigrants, and liberals. The condo owners at 200 Riverside Boulevard went further: their legal complaint cited “real estate value diminution,” and then they paid an estimated $23,000 to rip off the brass letters and wash the building.
Rich people on the Upper West Side spent real money to remove the Trump name specifically to protect their property values. Now he’s pitching New Mexico the exact opposite of what his own customers figured out. So, yay?
As for incomes rising on the strength of a rebrand: Coca-Cola messed with something people loved in 1985 and had to bring back the original 79 days later. New Coke didn’t raise anyone’s salary. It just made everyone mad and thirsty.
Miracle number three: you’d salute the flag even harder
New Mexico became the 47th state in 1912. Its people have been saluting the American flag under the name New Mexico for 114 years, which by my count is 114 years longer than Trump has had any say in it.
Patriotism by rebrand is a very specific kind of guy’s idea of patriotism: the kind where loving your country means agreeing with him about what everything should be called. Every woman I know has dated this guy. He’s the one who decides on the second date what your nickname is going to be, then sulks when you don’t answer to it.
Miracle number four: the crooked elections would become honest again
This is the only miracle he actually cares about.
New Mexico has voted for the Democrat in eight of the last nine presidential elections and has never once voted for Trump. Its entire congressional delegation is Democratic. So is every statewide elected official. Democrats run both chambers of the legislature. In September he called it “one of the great vote cheating states of all time.” Proof offered, then or now: fucking zero.
In Trump’s dictionary, a crooked election is one where people voted and gave the wrong goddamn answer. The rename is a man trying to rebrand his way out of losing a state, two weeks before he might lose a lot more than that.
And even his own guy won’t touch it. Greg Cunningham, the Republican Trump endorsed in that “Hello New America” video, is challenging Rep. Gabe Vasquez in the 2nd District. In a debate Friday night, Cunningham said a name change isn’t legislatively possible and nothing’s going to change. Three days later, the boss posted it anyway. His handpicked candidate had to stand on a debate stage and explain that the man who endorsed him was asking for something that cannot happen.
Cunningham happens to be correct. The name is written into the opening lines of New Mexico’s constitution, and changing it would take New Mexico voters amending it. A president can make federal agencies call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and Lake Ontario Lake America—he’s done both, and in August he mused that “now all we need is an ocean.” He cannot rename a state. Neither can a Truth Social post, no matter how many exclamation points it’s hauling.
New Mexico has been New Mexico for 428 years. It has outlasted Spain, Mexico, statehood, and every tourist who ever asked whether they’d need a passport. It does not need a new name. It needs the people already living there to vote in 15 days, which, judging by the panic posting, they fully intend to do.
Prince got his name back, by the way. And New Mexico never lost its name, orange-tinted dictators notwithstanding.
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Dumbest. Timeline. Ever. Also, as a former resident of the land of enchantment, I can tell you this ain’t gonna go over well at all.
Well trump doesn’t get to do that dies he, serious or not.