President Donald Trump Wanted To Attend The Super Bowl So He Could Be Flying Over The Gulf Of America When The Name Officially Changed

Gotta hand it to him, he knows how to put on a show.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump became the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl when he traveled to New Orleans to watch the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX.

Of course it’s far from the first time that President Trump has attended a major sporting event. But as it turns out, catching the big game may not have been his only reason for heading to New Orleans.

Doug Burgum, the United States Secretary of the Interior, recently appeared on the New York Post podcast Pod Force One with Miranda Devine, where he recounted the trip to the Super Bowl with Trump – which not so coincidentally was the same time Trump officially changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

On his first day in office, President Trump signed Executive Order 14172, directing Burgum to take steps to officially rename the Gulf of Mexico – which as you can imagine, wasn’t exactly a simple process:

“The Department of Interior’s got a huge breadth of responsibilities… But we also have the US Geologic Service, which provides a tremendous amount of scientific data, mapping where minerals are. But they also have got a committee inside that group that is about place names, the geographic naming, where if their name is going to be changed it has to go through them. President Trump did an executive order that empowered me as Secretary to make that official.”

And the president had the idea to have Burgum make the name change official from Air Force One as it was flying over the Gulf:

“President Trump asked Katherine and I if we wanted to go to the Super Bowl, and we’re like, ‘Well, that would be a lot of fun.’ But he wasn’t leaving from Washington DC. He was going to leave from Palm Beach because he was at Mar-a-Lago, at the southern White House. 

Well part of the reason he wanted to fly from there to New Orleans was then Air Force One would be flying over the Gulf of America.

So we had all of the documentation ready. And it’s not just a simple piece of paper when the name actually changes. The US Geological Survey then populates information to our systems, which then are picked up by people like Apple Maps, Google Maps, and those around the world.

We had to coordinate with the whole both public and private sector mapping world, and with the captain and crew of Air Force One to know when we’re going to take off, when we’re going to be over the Gulf.

So we did it at that moment.”

During the flight, the pilot of Air Force One dipped the plane and made an announcement:

“Attention everyone, if you please look out the right side of your window, you’re now looking at the Gulf of America.”

The president then signed the paperwork to put the name change into effect, as Air Force One was flying over the Gulf.

@skynews

Air Force One’s pilot announces that the plane is flying over the “recently renamed” Gulf of America as Donald Trump declares a special day in its honour. #gulfofamerica #donaldtrump

♬ original sound – Sky News – Sky News

Whatever you think about Trump, or the renaming of the Gulf, there’s no denying that the man knows how to put on a show.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Whiskey Riff (@whiskeyriff)

The post President Donald Trump Wanted To Attend The Super Bowl So He Could Be Flying Over The Gulf Of America When The Name Officially Changed first appeared on Whiskey Riff.