U.S. President Donald Trump renewed focus on Tuesday on his purported phone call with Mexican counterpart Claudia Sheinbaum regarding the controversial renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
The anecdote has become a recurring fixture in Trump’s remarks at public campaign events ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections. The president has frequently recounted that he initially debated whether to take the incoming call from the Mexican leader.
“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 like that.'”
Last weekend, the Republican leader indicated that he had also delivered the news to Sheinbaum in person, frequently adopting a mocking tone and imitating her voice during the retelling.
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“We went through the process and they said, ‘We have breaking news: the Gulf of Mexico is now called the Gulf of America.’ I received a call from the president and I answered. I didn’t want to; I was thinking about maybe not answering,” Trump said during a separate event in Alabama.
According to Trump, the Mexican president expressed profound surprise and disbelief upon hearing the decision. During a recent speech, Trump also said that of all the new names he has given to bodies of water, the Gulf of Mexico is his favorite.
