Comedian Bill Maher used his HBO show "Real Time" to ridicule liberal backlash over President Donald Trump's executive order renaming Lake Ontario to "Lake America." Maher suggested that those criticizing the move are hypocritical, given the left's own embrace of politically driven linguistic changes.
During his opening monologue on Friday, Maher joked about the renaming, which occurred amid a trade dispute with Canada. "Trump is so mad at Canada he renamed Lake Ontario Lake America," Maher quipped. "Now I gotta buy a new globe again."
Maher referenced previous instances, such as the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to "Gulf of America," and pointed out the timing of the Lake Ontario decision, which came as trade talks crumbled and the U.S. imposed tariffs on Canada. He then drew a parallel to evolving language on the political left.
"The liberals are very pissed at this," Maher said. "They say you can’t just go around changing things to fit your political agenda. Just ask any Latinx birthing person."
Trump signed the executive order on Thursday, stating, "This is official, effective immediately."
NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck echoed Maher's sentiment, telling Fox News Digital that the left's acceptance of terms like "Latinx" and "birthing person" weakens their criticism of Trump's actions. "The fact that ‘Latinx’ and ‘birthing person’ are increasingly accepted as a punchline rather than a serious demographic statement should give all of us hope that ‘Woke 1’ is dead, and we’re never going back to that farcical time," Houck stated.
NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham added that liberals often seek to rename things to align with their ideology. "Liberals want to rename all kinds of things to satisfy their urge for wokeness," Graham told Fox News Digital. "Just in this decade, they’ve pulled down all kinds of statues and renamed scads of military bases." He suggested that critics object to Trump's patriotic framing of such changes, viewing it as ego-driven rather than genuinely patriotic.
"The media routinely genuflect ethnic and LGBTQ pressure groups and their demands to remake the language we’re all supposed to use," Graham continued. "So, they can’t seriously object to renaming things. They just want to be the only people who get to rename things."