President Donald Trump apparently wasn't finished needling Canada.
After a week of increasingly heated rhetoric from Canadian officials over trade negotiations, Trump found another way to remind America's northern neighbor who is sitting across the table — and this time, he went straight for the map.
Trump has taken to calling Lake Ontario by a new name.
And if you're Canadian, you're probably not going to love it.
The latest jab comes amid an increasingly tense trade dispute between Washington and Ottawa, with Trump pushing to address a trade relationship he believes has tilted far too heavily in Canada's favor.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spent the weekend objecting to Trump's negotiating tactics after the president threatened a 50 percent tariff increase.
Carney complained that the United States had "asked too much and offered too little," before dramatically declaring, "You're at war when you get attacked. We got attacked."
Then Ontario Premier Doug Ford decided to turn the temperature up even further.
During a radio appearance, Ford called Trump "arrogant" and "cocky," said Canada needed to "throw everything and the kitchen sink at him," and even told the American president he could "kiss my ass."
That's quite a way to conduct international trade negotiations.
Trump, naturally, had an answer.
In a Truth Social post, the president dismissed Ford's rhetoric as "Lots of bluster" and took a particularly personal swipe at the Ontario premier, describing him as the "less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford."
Trump then grouped Ford and Carney together as "clowns" and warned them to "fall in line," or "the consequences for Canada will be FAR WORSE!"
And now comes the lake.
Trump's latest nickname for Lake Ontario is another unmistakable reminder that, for this president, diplomacy doesn't necessarily mean surrendering the ability to troll an opponent.
Canada may want to frame the dispute as a matter of national pride.
Trump appears to see it differently: America has economic leverage, Canada has benefited from the existing arrangement, and Washington is finally willing to use that leverage.
That is the part of Trump's foreign-policy style that drives his opponents crazy.
He doesn't seem particularly interested in pretending that every disagreement requires a dozen carefully scripted diplomatic phrases. If another government attacks him publicly, he is perfectly willing to answer publicly — and often with considerably more force.
Canada wanted Americans to know it was ready for a trade war.
Trump heard them.
Now Ottawa is discovering that when you pick a fight with Donald Trump, you don't get to control the punchline.
And apparently, you don't get to control what he calls your lake, either.
