2026-08-26T04:01:29.245Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/politics/trump-renaming-lake-ontario-kennedy-center
放马过来吧，加拿大与卡米洛特。
这位“美国推土机总统”计划拆除肯尼迪艺术中心，或将安大略湖更名——如果他在一项核心遗产项目中受挫，或是在最新贸易战中失利的话。
这两项周二放出的威胁看似荒诞无稽，却恰恰体现了特朗普第二任期的核心驱动力：坚信没有任何事物能阻挡他的脚步。
当现实无法令他满意时，他就会亲手创造自己的“现实”。
这两起事件同时也引出了一个刺眼的问题：在伊朗战事持续升级、美国民众在中期选举前夕对食品、燃料和住房高企的价格感到绝望之际，特朗普为何会执着于这类鸡毛蒜皮的小事？
这真的是美国民众在2024年投票选出的执政方向吗？
但这种刻意挑衅正是最真实的特朗普。这展现了他如何利用 spectacle 式政治激怒精英阶层、搅乱体制并引发媒体风暴。这一切都是为了塑造他的局外人形象，团结其民粹主义支持者。
几乎没有任何机构是他不想破坏的——如果胆敢反抗他的权力，就将被彻底摧毁。没有任何建筑、自然地标或历史文物能逃过这位“品牌大师”的目光。法院、宪法与美国盟友都不在话下；特朗普试图在这片土地与地图上留下印记，确保全世界都记得他。
但就在这位总统眼中看到了不受制约的权力机会之际，他周二的极端反应也暗示着其权力正日渐式微。他的法律团队威胁要拆除肯尼迪艺术中心，只因法院挫败了他翻新该中心的计划——或许并非巧合的是，他还希望将自己的名字刻在建筑正面。
他将分隔纽约州与安大略省的这片广阔水域更名为“美国湖”的威胁可能只是玩笑话，但这种虚张声势背后隐藏着潜在的失败：加拿大拒绝让他在最新贸易战中获胜。将一片湖泊改成大多数人都不会使用的名字，似乎远不如将加拿大收为梦寐以求的第51个州来得划算。
特朗普针对肯尼迪艺术中心的最新威胁，出自一起试图阻挠其控制权争夺的诉讼相关法律文件。他的团队警告称，如果无法启动翻新工程，该中心可能需要被改建为露天圆形剧场。
最直接地说，特朗普正在使用一项熟悉的策略：通过看似离谱的法律论点来操控司法程序。此前已有法官裁定，总统无权更改该建筑的名称，也无权批准大规模结构改造工程。这项权力属于国会，而非他为夺权而安排的总统任命受托人团队。
但这起事件同样令人震惊的是，特朗普完全无视其举动带来的观感影响：他要接管的是一座纪念遇刺总统的活纪念碑，这位总统曾在古巴导弹危机中避免了核战争。或许他是想借此侮辱一个伟大的美国、民主党家族——这个家族至今仍享有他渴望却始终未能获得的历史认可。
尽管特朗普深谙娱乐政治之道，但很难说他对肯尼迪艺术中心的兴趣除了造成灾难性影响之外还有其他意义。华盛顿国家歌剧院与国家交响乐团已经撤离。《华盛顿邮报》周二报道称，在特朗普任命的董事会投票决定将其名字刻在建筑上后，门票销量与捐款额大幅下滑。随后出现了滑稽一幕：法院下令特朗普移除与第35任总统并列的名字后，一块防水布遮盖了建筑外立面。
批评人士可能会将这起彻底摧毁该中心的新威胁视为又一次报复行为，或是试图掩盖另一项尴尬的特朗普式工程，比如华盛顿倒影池的拙劣翻新。
但特朗普坚称，他正在美化近年来日渐破败的首都。诚然，清理喷泉、公园、雕像与部分公共建筑在许多情况下确实提升了市容美观。
与此同时，另一项法律对峙可能会叫停白宫东翼改建舞厅的工程——此前他以另一项法律存疑的权力 grab 拆除了东翼。而他提议的高耸拱门，将破坏首都的神圣天际线，许多人认为这将成为未来纪念总统狂妄自大的纪念碑。
但即便在这场法律斗争中落败，特朗普也可能从肯尼迪艺术中心的乱局中获得政治收益。将首都文化界的“深层政府”赶出他们的艺术殿堂，几乎不会损害特朗普的民粹主义形象。
总统在社交媒体上威胁更名安大略湖，是对这个长期以来派遣子弟奔赴美国战场、牺牲却被特朗普无视的友好邻国的嘲弄与轻蔑。
周二，加拿大誓言将对等报复关税威胁，此前特朗普在贸易协定提案中提出的要求被指侵犯了加拿大主权。
他发布的标注“美国湖”新名称的地图看似幼稚之举，却也揭示了他的政治手段。
特朗普热爱刻意挑衅。他最走红的帖子往往会引发政界、对手与传统媒体的愤怒。这能取悦他的支持者与右翼媒体。
特朗普让“五大湖之一重焕荣光”的提议并非首次。这效仿了他在去年就职演说中宣布将墨西哥湾更名为“美国湾”的做法。当时，他2016年的败选对手希拉里·克林顿忍不住咯咯发笑。对反对特朗普的人士而言，这是一个嘲讽的时刻。但这一事件也让人窥见了这位新任总统有按照自己的君主式意愿重绘地图的习惯。
几周前，特朗普曾调侃称要将被伊朗牢牢控制的霍尔木兹海峡宣布为美国领土。总统无权直接将一片自己无法掌控的外国水域纳入美国版图，但这番挑衅让保守派评论员拍手称快，并暂时将公众注意力从他的失败上转移开——去年冬天他曾宣称仅用几天就结束了战争。
所有总统都会将命名权作为政治权力工具，以彰显其意识形态，尝试定义自己的时代。
但特朗普将这一点推向了新高度，这恰好符合这位靠在酒店、高尔夫球场、牛排与运动鞋上打上自己名字发家的连续品牌创业者的身份。
他的政府已重新命名军事基地、军舰与山峰，以推行其所谓的“反觉醒”运动。例如，他们恢复了阿拉斯加麦金利山的旧名——此前巴拉克·奥巴马总统以该山历史上的原住民名称“德纳里”对其进行了更名。
据美国有线电视新闻网上周报道，五角大楼——在其充满男子气概的新绰号“战争部”之下——正考虑为一艘在建航母更名，潜在人选是特朗普。该航母原本计划以珍珠港黑人英雄多丽丝·“多里”·米勒的名字命名。
在有关安大略湖的线上挑衅中，特朗普称无需提及安大略省，因为美加双边贸易很快就会终止。
但当然，这位“头号挑衅者”自己也会被挑衅。
“不如就叫娜塔莉湖吧，这样我们就知道你会开始保护我们的五大湖了，”密歇根州民主党众议员黛比·丁格尔在X平台上写道，隐晦地提及了白宫行政助理娜塔莉·哈普——特朗普无处不在的助手。
Trump targets a Great Lake and a great American in his latest quest for power
2026-08-26T04:01:29.245Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/politics/trump-renaming-lake-ontario-kennedy-center
Take that, Canada and Camelot.
America’s bulldozer president plans to raze the Kennedy Center and rename Lake Ontario if he’s frustrated in one of his top legacy projects and his latest trade war.
The pair of threats made Tuesday seem absurd. But they epitomize a driving impulse of Trump’s second term: the belief that nothing can stand in his way.
And when reality doesn’t please him, he invents his own.
The twin episodes also raise the glaring question of why Trump fixates on such trifles even as his war in Iran grinds on and Americans despair at high prices for food, fuel and housing ahead of the midterm elections.
Is this really what the country voted for in 2024?
But the trolling is Trump at his most authentic. It shows how he wields the politics of spectacle to outrage elites, confound establishments and ignite media storms. It’s all a way of burnishing his outsider image and uniting his populist coalition.
There’s almost no institution that he won’t try to disrupt — or destroy, if it resists his power. No building, natural landmark or historic artifact is safe from the branding maestro’s eye. Courts, the Constitution and US allies be damned; Trump seeks to leave a mark on the landscape and the map to ensure the world remembers him.
But while the president sees openings for unaccountable power, his extreme reactions Tuesday also hint at growing impotence. His legal team is threatening to demolish the Kennedy Center only because the courts have confounded his plans to renovate it — and, perhaps not incidentally, to put his name on the front.
He might be kidding about renaming the vast body of water separating New York State and Ontario to Lake America. But his flex conceals potential failure: Canadians are refusing him a win in his latest trade war. Calling a lake a name most people won’t use seems a poor substitute for adding Canada as his coveted 51st state.
Trump’s latest threat to the Kennedy Center emerged in legal documents related to a court attempt to thwart his bid for control. His team warns that if renovations don’t happen, the center may need to be replaced by an open-air amphitheater.
Most immediately, Trump is trying a familiar device by adopting an apparently outlandish legal argument to game the judicial process. Judges have previously ruled that the president lacks the authority to change the building’s name or to authorize major structural work. That power resides with Congress — not the presidentially appointed trustees he’s lined up to empower his takeover bid.
But the saga is also remarkable for Trump’s obliviousness to the optics of taking over a living memorial to an assassinated president who staved off nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Perhaps he’d like to deal an insult to a great American and Democratic dynasty that still enjoys the historic recognition that he seems to crave, but that so far eludes him.
It’s hard to argue that — for all Trump’s showbiz nous — his interest has been anything other than disastrous for the Kennedy Center. The Washington National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra have left home. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that ticket sales and donations plummeted after Trump’s board voted to put his name on the building. Farcical scenes followed, with a tarp covering the facade after the president was ordered by a court to erase his name from alongside that of the 35th president.
Critics will likely see the new threat to destroy the center altogether as yet another act of revenge, or an attempt to cover up another embarrassing Trump project, along with the botched renovation of Washington’s Reflecting Pool.
Trump, however, insists he’s beautifying a capital that has been left to decay in recent times. And it’s true that cleaning up fountains, parks, statues and some public buildings has been in many cases an aesthetic improvement.
Meanwhile, another legal showdown threatens to halt construction on the ballroom that is replacing the White House East Wing, which he tore down in another legally questionable power grab. And his proposed towering arch that would overshadow the capital’s sacred sight lines is seen by many as a future memorial to presidential hubris.
But there may be political mileage for Trump in the Kennedy Center imbroglio even if he loses the legal fight. Turfing the capital’s cultural deep state out of their palace of the arts is hardly likely to harm Trump’s populist credentials.
The president’s social media threat to rename Lake Ontario was a gesture of mockery and contempt toward a loyal neighbor that has long been sending its sons to die in America’s wars — sacrifices Trump ignores.
Canada vowed Tuesday to match his tariff threats dollar for dollar after accusing him of infringing its sovereignty with demands embedded in trade-deal proposals.
His posting of a map showing the new potential “Lake America” seems a juvenile gesture, but it was also a telling insight into his political methodology.
Trump loves trolling. His most viral posts often create outrage in the political establishment, among his foes and in traditional media. This serves to please his base and right-wing media.
Trump’s proposal to Make one of the Great Lakes Great Again is not even a new move. It mirrors his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America, announced during his inaugural address last year. When he did so, Hillary Clinton, his vanquished 2016 opponent, couldn’t contain her giggles. For Never-Trumpers it was a moment of ridicule. But the episode turned out to be a glimpse of an incoming president with a habit of redrawing maps to suit his monarchical whims.
A few weeks ago, Trump mused about declaring the Strait of Hormuz, which is under an Iranian stranglehold, US territory. A president can’t just declare a foreign waterway he doesn’t control part of the United States. But the troll delighted conservative pundits and for a little while turned attention away from his failure to end a war he claimed that he’d won after a few days last winter.
All presidents use naming rights as a tool of political power, to reflect their ideology and to try to define their age.
But Trump takes it to another level, fittingly for a serial brander who made his fortune putting his name on hotels and golf courses, steaks and sneakers.
His administration has renamed military bases, warships and mountain peaks to empower what it sees as its anti-woke crusade. It hauled out the old name for Mount McKinley in Alaska, for example, which had been renamed Denali by President Barack Obama after its historic Native American title.
And CNN reported last week that the Pentagon — under its testosterone-fueled new moniker the Department of War — is considering renaming an aircraft carrier under construction, potentially for Trump. It had been slated to honor Black Pearl Harbor hero Doris “Dorie” Miller.
In his online troll about Lake Ontario, the president said there was no need to mention the province because two-way trade with the US would soon peter out.
But of course the troller in chief can himself be trolled.
“Let’s just call it Lake Natalie so we know you’ll start protecting our Great Lakes,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan wrote on X, in an arch reference to White House executive assistant Natalie Harp, the president’s ubiquitous aide.