Up next in 10
James O'Brien and Simon Marks run through the series of events that suggest Trump might not have the 'mental capacity' to be president.
It comes after the US President signed an executive order for the body of water, which straddles the US and Canada's borders, to be called by a new title, as part of an escalating trade war.
The attempt to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America comes after Mr Trump ordered the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed as the Gulf of America, something that Mexico rejected.
Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney has hit back at Donald Trump's order, stating its historic name will never change.
Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp
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0:00
It is 25 minutes to 12. You are listening to James O'Brien on LBC, where once again I invite you to sit in on the mutual support network that Simon Marks and I have established in order to deal with the fact that it is close to impossible to report on or chronicle the madness of Donald Trump in any traditional, recognisable or rational way
0:22
because I'm almost a challenge to my vocabulary sometimes. Simon seems up to the challenge, but I'm not sure I am
0:29
I can't find the words. Here's one. Here's a new phrase that I haven't used before
0:32
There is no act too childish for him. He would never rule anything out on the grounds that it's too childish
0:39
Have a listen to him talking in the Oval Office. This is Donald Trump, not Simon Marks
0:45
Talking in the Oval Office yesterday. The purpose of this more than anything else
0:49
We're going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario, effective immediately to Lake America
0:58
That's going to take place right now as I sign the order
1:02
Do you have anything to say about it, Ben? Yes, sir. So this is a straightforward but important executive order
1:08
It directs Secretary Burgum and the Department of the Interior to update the Geographic Names Information Service
1:15
to reflect that Lake, once known as Lake Ontario, will from this day forward be known as Lake America
1:21
This is a lake that has most of its volume in the United States, the deepest parts of the lake sit in the United States territory
1:27
so this will reflect that this is an American lake. Thank you
1:33
Literally, it's like writing your name on something in a Sharpie, isn't it
1:38
and going, right, that's called Donald's House now. Absolutely. Well, I was joking earlier in the week
1:43
I was saying that listeners I didn't think needed to bring their atlases out and start scratching out Lake Ontario with a felt tip pen
1:50
and then writing in Lake America. And 24 hours later, he did it
1:55
because there's a separate TikTok video that he produced after signing that ludicrous executive order
2:01
in which he literally has a copy of the map and he scratches the name out Lake Ontario
2:06
and replaces it with Lake America. I think you used a very important phrase at the beginning here
2:11
You talked about the madness of Donald Trump. I think we have, as the Americans would put it
2:17
over the last 24 hours and arguably earlier than that, I think we've jumped the shark
2:21
Really? I think that you can't now debate, really, whether he has the mental capacity to serve as President of the United States
2:32
Let's put what happened yesterday into context. Today is the six-month anniversary of the beginning of his war on Iran
2:41
It was February the 28th when he made the fateful decision to wage war on Iran
2:46
It is now August the 28th. He has no way out. In that Oval Office appearance yesterday, he was asked repeatedly about why his CIA director
2:56
had travelled to Moscow on a secret mission this week. Was it, as has been reported, to warn the Russians not to attack a NATO member state
3:06
And he just waves this away and says, no, I've had talks with Putin. Putin has assured me he's not going to attack NATO
3:13
Well, if you look at the congressional website, the US Congress in its library has documents that says
3:19
for many months the Russians have actually been engaged in hybrid actions against NATO member states
3:26
He's launched this week this absolutely futile economic D-Day on Iran. There are all sorts of major issues engulfing and beleaguering
3:36
a president who is now 65 days away from November midterm elections And what did he decide to do yesterday Take an action so puerile so extraordinarily juvenile
3:51
that it is only guaranteed further to crater his approval ratings. Is it though
3:57
Yeah. This is what you mean by jumping the top. Apart from the odd Daily Mail columnist, no one can pretend now that this is not
4:04
even worse than all of his worst critics predict. Well, it's just pathetic
4:08
It's beyond pathetic. It's just, I mean, we went through the whole... You said puerile and juvenile. Puerile, juvenile and pathetic
4:13
And infantile and pathetic. I mean, we went through the Gulf of Mexico thing, right
4:17
What's that called now? The Gulf of Mexico called the Gulf of America. Has anyone changed their maps
4:21
Well, Google now on its maps has Gulf of Mexico. Yeah. Underneath it in brackets, it has Gulf of America
4:27
because that is the way that Google says that it indicates disputes over the names of territories
4:33
And look, this is... I mean, he said in the Oval Office there, as he was watched on by, among others, Stephen Miller
4:40
and his Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum. Both of them absolute slavish sycophants
4:46
They've sent official paperwork in. I mean, he is changing what the United States..
4:51
Where's the paperwork? No, where's the lake? Oh, the lake. It's up between the United States and Canada
4:56
It's up in Michigan. It's not named, by the way, after Ontario the state. No
5:00
I mean, the name Ontario is rooted in Indigenous language from hundreds and hundreds of years ago
5:05
Yes, I thought so. that refers to a beautiful place and gleaming water. So he doesn't even, I mean, he's doing this, of course
5:10
because he's attacking Canada again at the end of a week in which, you know, he upended through the good offices
5:17
or the untrustworthy offices of his Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, the Canadian trade negotiations
5:23
So there's a full-scale trade war now underway between the United States and Canada
5:27
Mark Carney, as we talked about earlier in the week, kind of schooling leaders all over the world
5:32
including, I suspect, possibly our own, about how you deal with Donald Trump
5:38
how you confront the reality head on, rather than imagining that there's some way
5:43
that, you know, you can make all this somehow work out in the end
5:48
So, but the reason why I think it's going to, again, depress his approval ratings
5:54
was two reasons. I mean, first of all, because it's just so obviously ridiculous and stupid
5:59
This is the fascinating thing, isn't it? and that people, because you know, I'm thinking of some of the phrases that I've heard over the years
6:05
It's, oh, he's upsetting all the right people, or I know he's a liar, but I love it because it upsets you and Sadiq Khan
6:11
That was directed at me, not at you. Or, yeah, he's so good at baiting
6:16
But there comes a point, and you can allow people that, you know, okay, yeah, you're right, you know, if you hate racism
6:22
then Donald Trump is really going to wind you up. Or if you hate malfeasance or moral depravity, then yeah, you're right
6:28
He is going to upset all the right people. But he's renaming a lake because he's a whopping great man-child
6:34
How do you square that with your truck-driving, patriotic, redneck kind of celebrations
6:41
We're 65 days away from midterm elections. And the real thing that is on the minds of Americans this weekend as they head to the supermarket
6:51
as they fill their car up with petrol, is the price of his war on Iran
6:56
six months into a massive military mobilization, the largest since the 2003 US attack on Iraq
7:06
And the notion that he is wasting his time with this stuff is not going to play even with his grassroots supporters
7:15
who remember are now on the receiving end of blandishments from challengers to Donald Trump from within MAGA People like Tucker Carlson Marjorie Taylor Greene Even the ousted congressman Thomas Massey Last week he accused them all of being traitors because they held a kind of a summit meeting at which they appeared to be discussing their own
7:33
possible political viability in the future as they position themselves as future challengers
7:39
for the MAGA leadership. The other reason, oddly, why I think this is going to damage him is because
7:46
it comes at the end of a week in which the country has united around one unexpected issue
7:52
and that is the death of dolly parton i knew you're going to say a woman who never performed
7:58
on a political stage never played a political rally whose viewpoints were very clear if you
8:04
listen to her music and you see the occasional things that she said that were political
8:08
but the fact that that united the country at a time of total polarization and tribal division
8:17
I think is a further reminder to many Americans of just how far the country has drifted down this
8:25
hard right populist ludicrous path where you just get an atlas out and you scratch out the name of
8:33
Lake Ontario and you rename it Lake America that's not solving any problems for anyone and he's going
8:40
to pay the price for that in the midterms. Well I you know we've been here before well not quite I
8:44
mean I still can't believe he got in again as president but these midterms remember remember
8:48
the 3rd of November um that could be crucial and it would just mean he then limps well either he
8:54
limps towards ignominy or he goes absolutely all in on the madness. Yeah well that's my concern. I
8:59
No, you were one of the first people to articulate that. I think that he's particularly unpredictable
9:05
and potentially dangerous when he's cornered. And if we look at what the polls are showing
9:12
it seems absolutely evident that the Democrats are going to romp to victory
9:16
in the House of Representatives. And certainly Steve Bannon, his own on-again, off-again political advisor
9:24
has been sounding the alarm publicly about his concern that the Republicans may even be about to lose the Senate
9:32
And he doesn't blame Trump for that. He blames the Republican leader in the Senate
9:38
for refusing to pass the Save America Act, which, of course, is the measure that would upend the midterms entirely
9:45
by suddenly requiring that every single person that casts a vote first has to prove they are an American citizen
9:51
And how you could possibly make those arrangements right now, given that we're two months away from Election Day
9:56
is open to question. It's funny because the Tories did something similar and it backfired, Jacob Rees-Mogg argued
10:02
So this presumption that if we introduce voter ID then it will discriminate against more left-leaning voters
10:09
Jacob Rees-Mogg, I mean even a stock clock is right twice a day so he may have been right about this, he may not
10:15
The presumption is that that would aid Republicans. It's not necessarily true
10:20
Yeah, well Democrats fervently believe that it would aid Republicans because they believe that if you introduce voter ID
10:26
they believe that that is targeted at their core constituencies, some of them, particularly
10:32
African-Americans and minority voters in the United States that may not necessarily
10:38
immediately have access to voter ID, have hands on it. The Republicans say that's absolutely
10:44
ludicrous. Everybody's got a driving license or an alternative ID. You've got the capacity to show
10:49
up at the polls. And if and if you haven't, what on earth is wrong with you? So that that's but
10:53
But the Democrats also fear this is part of a broader voter suppression effort that Donald Trump is engaged in
11:02
even talking about the possibility as some of his lieutenants have done about deploying ICE and the Border Patrol at polling stations because he wants evidence potentially to build the argument
11:15
that in various parts of the country where Republicans lose, illegal things were taking place at the polls
11:22
But the presence of ICE and the Border Patrol would also clearly suppress the vote
11:27
more likely among Democrat supporters than Republicans. Got it. Um, only half of Americans have a passport, give or take
11:36
Passport, yes. Driving licence. No, of course, but it is a remarkable statistic
11:40
Yeah, it is, absolutely. And half of them have got one. I don't know what the percentage of them is
11:46
that can't find the passport that they've got, but I suspect that that's quite significant as well
11:51
I'm getting a lot of ribbing for asking you where Lake Ontario was. I didn't realise. I mean, I did realise
11:56
because we studied it at school. It's one of the five Great Lakes. It's with the Great Lakes. Yeah, sorry. Michigan Superior
12:01
Ontario. Mexican-Supereo, Ontario. I didn't know we were doing a jogger. Well, hang on
12:06
Let's have a listen to that TikTok clip that you were just talking about instead
12:11
So this is Lake Ontario in Canada and in the United States
12:17
But we're going to make a little change. We're going to call it something different than Lake Ontario
12:21
We're going to call it Lake America. And all it takes is a good pen and some intelligence
12:28
So Lake Ontario, that's gone. lake America America America America America America America
12:41
So now we have a lake and now we have a gulf
12:47
because we have the gulf of America and now we have Lake America
12:51
without the of Thank you very much everybody Enjoy Lake America He's literally like a kid in that clip
12:59
with crayons and a colouring book. I mean, that's what it comes across as
13:03
I hadn't heard that. And then in the Oval Office yesterday, he also muted the possibility
13:10
that we've got a lake now, we've got a gulf, the Gulf of America
13:14
but we don't have an ocean. So he said yesterday, he's thinking that maybe he's going to rename
13:20
either the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean or both of them
13:24
And there was no indication that this was necessarily a gag. Well, you can't say it was a gag
13:30
No. Well, they will say it was a gag. But you can't. We can't. No, absolutely. Because we'll be sitting here in a week and then you'll have renamed it Trump-tion
13:38
The Ocean of America. The Ocean of America. I mean, the mind... I'm going to play that again
13:42
Honestly, I am. Because, you know, there are still people around who used to use the phrase Trump derangement syndrome
13:48
to describe those of us who could see pretty clearly what was going to happen
13:51
Although, I've got to be completely honest, I don't think anybody foresaw things being this pathetic, tragic, infantile, juvenile, all of the above
13:58
and somehow also worse. So this is Lake Ontario in Canada and in the United States
14:07
But we're going to make a little change. We're going to call it something different than Lake Ontario
14:10
We're going to call it Lake America. And all it takes is a good pen and some intelligence
14:18
So Lake Ontario, that's gone. Lake America. So now we have a lake, and now we have a gulf
14:33
Because we have the Gulf of America, and now we have Lake America
14:37
Without the of. Without the of. Without the of. You're back at four
14:41
I am. And then you're back tomorrow. I am tomorrow between three and six, and then Monday between four and seven
14:46
And then you're going to have a rest. A little rest. Yeah, without the of
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