Democrat jabs Trump over Lake Ontario threat: ‘Let’s just call it Lake Natalie’

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) on Tuesday took a jab at President Trump over his threat to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America amid his trade war with Canada , saying the U.S. should “just call it Lake Natalie” after White House executive assistant Natalie Harp.

Dingell shared on the social platform X a screenshot of Trump’s threat written on Truth Social . The president said that the U.S. was “giving serious consideration” to changing the name of one of the Great Lakes.

“Let’s just call it Lake Natalie so we know you’ll start protecting our Great Lakes,” she wrote.

The president’s threat mirrors his executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America . Other locations in the U.S. share the Canadian province’s name, including Washington, D.C.’s own Ontario Road in the Reed-Cooke neighborhood and the Southern California city and transportation hub located in San Bernardino County.

Democrats, beginning with Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), have taken digs at Harp after she boarded an Air Force jet with Trump upon leaving the NATO summit in Turkey last month.

The president said he was boarding the older Air Force One instead of his Qatari-gifted jet, leaving some Cabinet members aboard the old plane while he, Harp and other White House staffers flew off on the third plane.

Ossoff mocked the president and Harp during a rally with supporters earlier this month. He said that as president, Trump only “wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

Republican lawmakers clapped back at Ossoff, with Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) calling the discourse around Trump and Harp “ super misogynistic .” The president’s son, Eric Trump, defended Harp as a “ genuinely good person ” and called the discourse around their relationship “absolute trash.”

“It’s been amazing to watch this White House melt down over this all week,” Ossoff later said in response to the backlash during an interview with MS NOW.

Ossoff also told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell that as a White House employee in a government position, Harp and other officials working for Trump should be permissible targets of political criticism.

Harp frequently travels with Trump on golfing trips and at Mar-a-Lago, occasionally bringing along a printer to pass him information in hard copy and drafting his social media posts.

She fought bone cancer in 2019 and sent letters to Trump that described him as her “guardian and protector in this life,” while he wrote back praising her battle with the disease, The New York Times reported. Harp said that the Right to Try Act, legislation the president passed in 2018, provided her with access to experimental treatments.

Harp’s brother, Preston Harp, told CNN that his sister’s devotion to Trump was an “unhealthy obsession.”