Trollmeister Trump takes his cartographic aggression to Hormuz
TOI correspondent from Washington: US President Donald Trump is expanding his cartographic project to “Make America Bigger Again.”The latest addition to the Trump atlas arrived Tuesday on Truth Social, where the MAGA supremo posted a map depicting the Strait of Hormuz under the words “NEW US TERRITORY.” This followed his declaration last week that the strait would be made US territory “pretty soon.” Iran, presumably, was not consulted, though it did issue a statement best summarised as “lol, no.”Trump has previously floated Canada as the 51st state, plastered American colors on a map of Venezuela, repeatedly expressed his desire for the US to acquire Greenland from Denmark, and rechristened the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”The latter was not merely a Truth Social doodle: Trump formally ordered the federal government to use the new name.To critics, this is cartographic aggression – the US President treating sovereign borders like Monopoly properties and international geography like a hotel lobby where the management can simply move the furniture and re-designate areas.To supporters, however, it is something closer to political trolling with a military budget: an elaborate exercise in provoking and shocking opponents, owning the libs, and keeping the political conversation permanently inside the Trump amusement park.The geographic makeover isn’t even the whole show. There’s also the President’s flourishing side career in photoshop hagiography.In recent months he has shared AI-generated images placing himself alongside or rescuing figures such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, while other images have cast him in heroic, quasi-mythological or religious roles. There was also a Trump-as-Jesus image, complete with unmistakably messianic symbolism – a visual leap from “Commander in Chief” to “Commander of Heaven,” although the post was later removed.The effect is to blur the traditional boundary between presidential communication and internet meme culture. Presidents have historically appeared on Mount Rushmore only after death, and usually without having to photoshop themselves there. Trump, by contrast, seems determined to skip the waiting period.His defenders see the imagery as humor, self-confidence and political theater – another way of speaking directly to supporters without passing through what he regards as hostile media gatekeepers. Critics see something more troubling: the spectacle of the presidency itself being turned into a personal brand, with the office increasingly resembling a combination of campaign rally, action movie and late-night meme account.The distinction matters because presidents possess real power. When an ordinary internet troll declares a body of water to be his property, the appropriate response is generally to scroll past it. When the President of the United States does it, foreign governments, diplomats, markets, and military planners wonder whether the joke has a punchline – or a policy attached to it.Trump has always understood that attention is political oxygen. His genius, or mischief, is knowing that nothing attracts attention quite like putting a “FOR SALE” sign on someone else’s country. The danger for the presidency is that, after enough trolling, the world may stop knowing whether it is watching a commander in chief or a geopolitical real-estate agent.
