Google has willingly gone along with Donald Trump’s recurring habit of renaming things, but apparently even the tech giant has its limits when it comes to humiliating itself to show fealty to this administration. During a frankly brutal rally in South Carolina on Wednesday, Trump claimed he had contacted Google CEO Sundar Pichai about renaming the Atlantic Ocean the “American Ocean” on Google Maps, only to be (finally) rebuffed.
During the rally, which took place at Clemson University, Trump disclosed to the audience that he “seriously looked at” changing the name of the Atlantic Ocean, according to Variety’s transcription, and reached out to Google’s CEO to discuss the possibility. “I said, ‘Sundar, I’m thinking of the Atlantic Ocean. Can you handle it?’” Trump told the crowd before claiming that Pichai responded, “No, no, no — this time I’m not doing it… Oceans are different, sir. They cover really a lot of countries. Please don’t ask us to do that.”
That was apparently enough to dissuade Trump, who said he would “probably pass” on the name change.
Trump has beaten the dead horse on changing names, so while it’s at best obnoxious for him to try to run the same play again, there is something revealing in how he described the order of operations.
Per Trump’s account—which everyone should take with a grain of salt given he is the world’s most unreliable narrator—he reached out to Google first before making the name change to make sure the company would go along with it and, when Pichai said they wouldn’t, he backed down.
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