--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today, Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Noel King: And I'm Noel King.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, we're talking about the Gulf of America. What started as a liberal joke is now a MAGA reality. Just check your map app. But it's not just Google, Apple, and Microsoft falling in line.
--:-- Noel King: That's right. So, let's start with the basics. What's going on with the Gulf of America?
--:-- Brian Glenn: [from Real America's Voice] I think my most shocking moment from the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Zelensky on Friday was when some reporter asked the Ukrainian president why he wasn't wearing a suit.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: [laughs] That's Brian Glenn from Real America's Voice, a right-wing conspiracy loving cable news channel that only recently got access to the White House when the new administration started handpicking who gets to hang out with the president. Real America's Voice is in. The Associated Press is out.
--:-- Noel King: You remember the AP, founded in 1846. 59 Pulitzers, King of Style. They're currently suing the Trump administration over being banned from the Oval Office.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And why were they banned? Because they won't call it the Gulf of America.
--:-- Noel King: We are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. How the president renamed the Gulf, coming up on Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.
--:-- Noel King: Didn't know that. While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows, and AI, connecting every corner of your business.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most.
--:-- Noel King: I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place?
--:-- Noel King: Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
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--:-- Noel King: Today Explained here with Matt Visor, White House bureau chief for The Washington Post.
--:-- Matt Visor: Matt, it was on day one of President Donald Trump's second term where he mentioned the Gulf of America at his inauguration. Where did this idea come from?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He wasn't running on the Gulf of America platform per se, was he?
--:-- Matt Visor: No. And there's a couple of different aspects of this. First is sort of the origin of this idea generally, which doesn't necessarily come from Trump.
--:-- Noel King: And then secondly is a little bit of indication of how it may have gotten onto his radar.
--:-- Matt Visor: The origins generally date back to at least 2010 as somewhat of a joke. Stephen Colbert on his show on Comedy Central had referenced raising money for the BP oil spill at the time off the Gulf Coast in the Gulf of Mexico.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is one time when you want to hear that a charity is skimming from the top.
--:-- Matt Visor: And he named the fund that he was raising money for the Colbert Nation Gulf of America Fund.
--:-- Noel King: I don't think we can call it the Gulf of Mexico anymore. We broke it. We bought it.
--:-- Matt Visor: It was a joke. He raised about $100,000 to help those who had been impacted by the oil spill.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And actually, the way that he raised money was from the Microsoft search engine called Bing.
--:-- Matt Visor: Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. So he said Bing as many times as he could, and they would donate money for every time he said Bing.
--:-- Noel King: What a shame we didn't have one more bing. $100,000!
--:-- Matt Visor: So that was kind of the joke, the ruse, the total satire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Two years later, a Mississippi lawmaker also does it as a little bit of a kind of a trolling of his Republican colleagues at the time, making fun of them for being afraid of Hispanics and, you know, not calling it the Gulf of Mexico.
--:-- Matt Visor: So he kind of did it as a joke to rename the Gulf off of Mississippi as the Gulf of America.
--:-- Noel King: So let's just get rid of the Mexico thing and let's have the Gulf of America.
--:-- Matt Visor: We'll be very unique in this country and we'll be on an island unto ourselves. Everybody else can have the Gulf of Mexico, but we'll have the Gulf of America. Again, joking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More recently, what we've been able to trace a little bit is conservative influencers started to refer to it as the Gulf of America.
--:-- Matt Visor: The one that I traced it to is a guy Kevin Posobiak.
--:-- Noel King: Close listeners and followers may know his brother Jack Posobiak who's uh you know sort of a conspiracy theorist, well-known in the right-wing ecosphere.
--:-- Matt Visor: Proud Boys USA is here. What's up? What is up? Proud of your boy. Proud Boys.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: His brother Kevin is less well-known, but Kevin was in the Gulf last April with a buddy, and they had rented Wave Runners.
--:-- Matt Visor: And when I talked to Kevin, he sort of recounted the whole scene and just felt like it was such an America thing to do, out there in the water.
--:-- Noel King: And he said, it came to me. It's like you see Hulk Hogan and think, man, that's America.
--:-- Matt Visor: What you gonna do when Donald Trump and all the Trump-a-maniacs run wild on you, brother?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just having fun in the sun, a Florida man kind of moment.
--:-- Matt Visor: And so he tweets, at the time, a message saying, Cruising the Gulf of America, its proper name come 2025.
--:-- Noel King: Jack Posobiec, his brother, retweets him at the time to his three million followers, who include Donald Trump.
--:-- Matt Visor: And he later sort of resurrects this idea closer to the inauguration in December.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: While we're at it, Gulf of Mexico? I think you mean Gulf of America.
--:-- Matt Visor: So that's an indication of maybe how Trump starts to think, maybe we should rename this the Gulf of America.
--:-- Noel King: Trump first makes this announcement in a press conference in early January.
--:-- Matt Visor: Like two weeks before the inauguration, we going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory.
--:-- Matt Visor: The Gulf of America, what a beautiful name. And it's appropriate.
--:-- Noel King: And gets his staff to rewrite some executive orders.
--:-- Matt Visor: And certainly it hits a lot of our radars at that time and in the inaugural address.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, this sort of very prominent sweeping speech meant to indicate the new priorities of a new president.
--:-- Matt Visor: And Gulf of America, it turns out, is one of those key agenda items.
--:-- Noel King: The Gulf of America, and we will restore the...
--:-- Matt Visor: How does Mexico feel about it? Not great.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Mexican president has sort of expressed opposition to this.
--:-- Matt Visor: Why don't we call it Mexican America? It sounds nice, right?
--:-- Noel King: Since 1607, the constitution of Apatzingán referred to it as Mexican America.
--:-- Matt Visor: We're going to call it Mexican America. It sounds beautiful, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They have threatened to file lawsuits against mapmakers, you know, like Google Maps has changed their maps.
--:-- Matt Visor: And the Mexican president has talked about, you know, filing lawsuits against Google as a result of it.
--:-- Noel King: So who knows how this could blow up in diplomatic channels down the line.
--:-- Matt Visor: Is there an official way to go about doing this more official than an executive order?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Could Congress make this feel a little more than a petty presidential whim?
--:-- Matt Visor: Yeah, Congress could also change the name, which would make it harder to change back.
--:-- Noel King: So Marjorie Taylor Greene, almost immediately after Trump mentioned this in early January, filed legislation to do it.
--:-- Matt Visor: It's absolutely the right thing to do. We change post office names all the time up here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You better bet we are absolutely going to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Let's go.
--:-- Matt Visor: I don't know that the legislation is actively going to go anywhere, but legislation would be harder to overturn.
--:-- Noel King: So you're in a scenario now where a future Democratic president could say, you know what, that Gulf of America thing was ridiculous.
--:-- Matt Visor: We're changing the name back to, you know, Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of Obama. Come on, man.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or golf of Joe Biden. Come on, man.
--:-- Matt Visor: You know, like, they'll change it to something else.
--:-- Noel King: But like, because it's an executive order, it can kind of quickly and more easily be undone by a future president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's funny because you don't really think about who gets to decide what a body of water is called until some president just declares he's single-handedly renaming one.
--:-- Matt Visor: Who does get to decide? The tricky part here is that it is a shared body of water and different countries refer to it by a different name now.
--:-- Noel King: And so it's created a lot of controversy over whose side are you on?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As of this morning, Google Maps has officially changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on their platforms after President Trump's executive order.
--:-- Matt Visor: Google says it's their policy to change names when they have been updated by the government.
--:-- Noel King: Apple officially became the latest company to update the Gulf of Mexico on its maps to the Gulf of America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Reportedly, if you're in Mexico, it still looks like the Gulf of Mexico. But if you're in other countries, you'll see both names.
--:-- Matt Visor: Wow. I know. Even Bing, the one that Stephen Colbert was kind of using to raise money for the Gulf of Mexico BP oil spill.
--:-- Noel King: Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. Bing changed to Gulf of America on their map.
--:-- Matt Visor: It still exists. It still exists.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And BP also, BP, Chevron, all these oil companies have also changed to the Gulf of America.
--:-- Matt Visor: Who has flat out told the president no?
--:-- Noel King: It sounds like some government agencies are maybe dragging their feet.
--:-- Matt Visor: Some people are just straight up confused.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But some people out here are kind of pushing back, right?
--:-- Matt Visor: Yeah. I mean, most prominently, the Associated Press, for example, is still calling it the Gulf of Mexico.
--:-- Noel King: In part by pointing out that it's a global wire service that has readers in Mexico and around the world in countries that still refer to it as Gulf of Mexico.
--:-- Matt Visor: The Washington Post has a similar style approach.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, a lot of other news outlets are still referring to it as the Gulf of Mexico, while adding context around what Trump has declared it as.
--:-- Matt Visor: But that's created a major conflict with the White House and resulted in the Associated Press being kicked out of various press availabilities that the president has at the White House or on Air Force One.
--:-- Noel King: Right there, see the Gulf of America, which is a beautiful name.
--:-- Matt Visor: Most people agree.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know. It's, you know, AP has been terrible.
--:-- Matt Visor: I think they're radical left. I think they're third-rate reporters.
--:-- Noel King: The Associated Press has a very prominent style book.
--:-- Matt Visor: And because a lot of people follow what they do, I think the White House got particularly upset at them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, you've reported on this story, Matt. You've thought about it more than most, who maybe just dismissed it as sort of an inconsequential joke.
--:-- Matt Visor: Does it matter what we call the Gulf of Mexico?
--:-- Noel King: I think it can come across as a joke, but I do think it reflects like an underlying attitude that Trump has.
--:-- Matt Visor: And I think it's a reflection of how he's viewing the world and America's place in it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's that America is dominant and is going to take over and is going to be at the forefront.
--:-- Matt Visor: And, you know, it reflects, I think, his dismissal of countries who think otherwise.
--:-- Noel King: And so I think it has set an early marker for diplomacy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The fact that he's calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America is like one reflection, I think, of his whole outlook on the world and how he's going to approach dealing with foreign leaders.
--:-- Matt Visor: Matt Visor, WashingtonPost.com, where it's still called the Gulf of Mexico.
--:-- Noel King: Why? Big, powerful businesses. Some of the most powerful on Earth, were so quick to accept Trump's newly named Gulf.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When we return on Today Explained.
--:-- [Theme music starts]
--:-- Emily Stewart: Hi, I'm Emily Stewart, a senior correspondent at Business Insider.
--:-- Noel King: And we used to work together.
--:-- Emily Stewart: We did used to work together. We're not scared of each other, even though we work at different places.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But you know who is scared, it seems, Emily? Google, Apple, Microsoft.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I mean, I think a lot of companies are in a moment of just some trepidation around the political environment, right?
--:-- Noel King: You have a White House that is moving very fast and breaking a lot of things, whether that be executive orders on diversity, equity, inclusion, the president trying to move on tariffs.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It's just kind of a real moment of uncertainty.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Businesses, above all, they really like certainty.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You want to know that if you're going to make an investment, that's going to pay off for you in the next five years.
--:-- Noel King: And we are not a moment where businesses can really guarantee that.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Even though the economy's not in a bad way yet, it feels like it might be soon, but it isn't yet, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's bullish out here.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah, I mean, the economy is good. Consumers are spending, even though everybody's mad about inflation.
--:-- Noel King: You also have a Republican regime that usually is good for business, right? This means lower regulations. This probably means a more favorable tax situation.
--:-- Emily Stewart: But again, like I said before, if you are in a moment where you kind of don't know what will happen tomorrow, it makes it pretty hard to feel good about today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you're saying this isn't just Microsoft, Apple, Google. This is a broader situation?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah. I think across corporate America, you are kind of getting this sense that there's some pretty broad anxiety.
--:-- Noel King: I wrote a piece in Business Insider. I called it kind of scaredy cat capitalism. Scaredy cat capitalism. Right? Kind of fun.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Tell us about the other scaredy cats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It wasn't just the scary cats who were up there, you know, grinning behind Trump as he was inaugurated.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah. So I think, you know, you can kind of look in this a couple of different ways and see this kind of anxiety manifest itself.
--:-- Noel King: I think for me, kind of one of the more obvious places to look is around diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which the president has spoken out against pretty forcefully.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he's also asked his agencies to kind of go hunting for potential targets for lawsuits for just regular private companies that are engaging in DEI.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And now he's saying you can't engage in illegal DEI. That's what the I stands, right? Diversity, equity and illegal?
--:-- Noel King: Well, the question here is that nobody really knows what illegal DEI means.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So what we are seeing is a lot of companies have, some have come out and said, hey, we're going to really roll back on this. We're going to kind of take a pause.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You look like a target, right?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Who had kind of been a target of some anti-DEI activism even before this over there.
--:-- Noel King: Pride Month displays. Target sales dropped for the first time in six years. Following 2023's conservative backlash over its pride products in store.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Companies like Bud Light, Target, PetSmart, Nike, The North Face, and Adidas have all faced right-wing protests over LGBTQ plus products and ads and partnerships.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Children and LGBTQ, it's a very adult content, and now they're pushing it in stores.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It makes me afraid to go shopping, Charlie.
--:-- Noel King: General Motors cut its DEI section from its annual report.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Pepsi had a breakdown of its workforce demographics and a line about how it believed in culture of diversity, equity, inclusion as a competitive advantage.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's gone.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Even a Pinterest, which I guess most people don't think about Pinterest as much, but they used to have a section that was called inclusion and diversity.
--:-- Noel King: It's now called inclusion and belonging.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Pinterest is scared of Donald Trump?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Pinterest.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I mean, Chipotle had a section that was called diversity, equity and inclusion. Now it is culture and inclusivity.
--:-- Noel King: OK, so apart from DEI, there's also some lawsuits being settled in a very hasty fashion.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah. So in December, ABC News, which is owned by Disney, agreed to pay $15 million to Trump's future presidential library in order to settle a defamation lawsuit.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump had sued the network and George Stephanopoulos for defamation after the anchor incorrectly stated on air that Trump had been found liable for rape.
--:-- Emily Stewart: In fact the jury in the E Jean Carroll case found Trump liable for sexual abuse and explicitly not for rape.
--:-- Noel King: Meta in January cut a deal to give $22 million to the library to settle a lawsuit back from 2021 around the January 6th riots and Trump being removed from their platforms.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Elon Musk's ex also has paid money to the Trump library and breached a settlement over a similar situation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our case will prove this censorship is unlawful, it's unconstitutional, and it's completely un-American.
--:-- Emily Stewart: We're going to hold big tech very accountable.
--:-- Noel King: Paramount is resisting settling a lawsuit filed over a 60-minute segment with Kamala Harris.
--:-- Emily Stewart: They took out her answer and they inserted an entirely different answer that made her sound confident.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But a lot of people think it will probably settle because they want to do a business deal with Skydance and Paramount would rather do the deal and probably wouldn't mind spending the money to settle.
--:-- Emily Stewart: But we don't know if they're actually going to settle.
--:-- Noel King: And basically, I think the bigger picture here is that Trump likes to sue companies, right? He always has.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And these are maybe the types of lawsuits that if you're a Disney, if you're a Meta, you in normal times definitely have the money and the wherewithal to fight these lawsuits.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But right now, the guy suing you is in the White House and they are making the calculation that it's just better to make this payment, to reach the settlement, to do this donation and kind of move on and be in a better relationship with the guy in the White House.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It seems alarming that the biggest tech companies and media companies in the world are so scared of this administration.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, that's the thing I can't get over because I mean obviously Joe Schmoe lives in fear but like the mouse the house of mouse ABC George Stephanopoulos like these are people whose job it is to stand up to the government why aren't they flexing?
--:-- Emily Stewart: I mean, I do think it's important to recognize that a lot of publicly traded companies, big corporations answer to their shareholders and their shareholders might be looking around right now and saying, hey, like if you play ball with this administration, this is going to be better for us overall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You think of an Apple that recently made a big announcement about investments in the United States and jobs in the United States.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Apple's also facing a scenario where it may be facing the U.S. putting tariffs on goods from China.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so, you know, there's a world where it's like, okay, I'm nice to Donald Trump today.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Say, hey, buddy, like we're making all these investments.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when those tariffs do come down, maybe you get an exception or maybe you can at least get him on the phone to talk.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And so I do think there is some level of this is, for better or for worse, kind of smart business.
--:-- Noel King: But also, like I said before, where a lot of these companies don't want to be a target.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And it's not just of the president, and it's not just of a lawsuit.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You think about these social media campaigns.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Like, I think a lot about Bud Light back in 2023.
--:-- Noel King: This month, I celebrated my Day 365 of womanhood, and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever, a can with my face on it.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Huge blow up over a teeny tiny marketing campaign that they did with a transgender influencer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that really hurt their business, and it hurt their reputation.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Which is why their latest Super Bowl commercials feature Post Malone, Shane Gillis, and a whole lot of like beer and barbecue.
--:-- Noel King: Your mower smokes meat? Oh, a smoker cuts grass. Hell yeah.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I wonder, you know, it seems like there are sometimes risks of doing business this way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are there risks to all of these companies who are falling in line right now and hoping for a, you know, a good deal with Donald Trump as, you know, the years follow?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah. You think about kind of, let's say, back in 2017 or Trump's first term, right?
--:-- Noel King: And there were companies didn't play as much footsie with Trump as they are right now.
--:-- Emily Stewart: But a lot of them did join these kind of advisory councils to the president and around Charlottesville when there were racist riots in Charlottesville.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the president said that you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.
--:-- Emily Stewart: All of these companies backed out and said, we're quitting the council, we're quitting the council under pressure.
--:-- Noel King: Six executives have now resigned in protest from the president's 28-member manufacturing council.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Campbell's Soup CEO Denise Morrison was the latest to distance herself, saying Trump needs to be unambiguous in denouncing white supremacists.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that, I think, was an example of a moment where a lot of companies, it wound up turning around on them and kind of being a moment of bad publicity for being a part of these councils.
--:-- Noel King: That being said, they're all back now. Everybody's fine.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Well, Emily, before we go, I wonder, you know, for those of us who don't like to live in fear, are there any businesses out there marching to the beat of their own drum in this perilous moment for American industry?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I mean, like Costco and JP Morgan have both come out and said, we are sticking with our DEI initiatives.
--:-- Emily Stewart: This is how we are doing things.
--:-- Noel King: I do think it's important to point out, too, like, just because you're not talking about it as much doesn't mean you're not doing this kind of stuff.
--:-- Emily Stewart: What's going on internally is much more important than kind of what you're saying in a little annual report to the SEC.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And while I don't buy my eggs at Costco, I do recall, do you, the price of a hot dog at Costco?
--:-- Emily Stewart: It's a dollar, right?
--:-- Noel King: You know, I've never been to Costco, but it's a dollar.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It's been $1.50, Emily.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's been $1.50 for like 50 years since the dawn of time.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It's been $1.50.
--:-- Noel King: Emily Stewart, businessinsider.com, formerly of Vox.com, where she's missed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Avishai Artsy is still here. He produced today's show with Travis Larchuk.
--:-- Noel King: They were edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Andrea Christensdottir and Patrick Boyd.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is America Explained.
