PALM BEACH, Fla. – President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday in a left-field proposal that his administration would rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” ​​in his latest attack on Mexico.

“We will change because we do most of the work there and it is ours,” Trump said. “It is appropriate, and Mexico must stop allowing millions of people to flow into our country,” Trump said in a wide-ranging news conference.

Trump criticized Mexico for the increase in drugs entering the United States and said he would make Mexico and Canada pay for it through “significant tariffs.”

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“We want to get along with everyone. But you know… it takes two to tango,” he said.

Shortly afterward, longtime Trump ally, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, announced on X that she had directed her staff to begin drafting legislation to change the Gulf’s name.

“This is important to begin funding the map change for all agencies within the federal government, such as the FAA and the military,” she said in her post.

The Gulf of Mexico has been identified by several names throughout its history, with “Golfo de Mexico” first appearing on maps in the mid-16th century, when Spain occupied the territories now known as Cuba to the south, Mexico to the west, and Mexico to the west US states that surround it in the north are known.

The Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest and most important bodies of water in North America. It is the ninth largest body of water in the world and covers approximately 600,000 square miles.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, half of the U.S.’s petroleum refining and natural gas processing capacity is located in the Gulf of Mexico and supplies about 40% of the country’s seafood.

The more than 17.2 million acres of marshland and nearly 30,000 miles of tidal shoreline draw millions of tourists to the area each year and are home to hundreds of species of fish, according to NOAA.

Trump’s promise to rename the Gulf is not the first.

In 2012, then-Mississippi state Rep. Steve Holland proposed a bill that would also have renamed the Gulf the “Gulf of America.” However, the Democrat backtracked, saying he was joking and using it as a way to criticize his Republican colleagues for their xenophobic stance.

“They’re really trying to discriminate against immigrants, which really offends me,” Holland told ABC News in 2012. “I just thought if we’re going to get into it, we might as well all get into it, it’s pure tongue and cheek.” .”

Stephen Colbert suggested the same name during the 2010 BP oil spill on his Comedy Central show “The Colbert Report.”

“We broke it, we bought it,” he joked.