Donald Trump took another swipe at Canadian officials on Saturday, pressing ahead with his push to rebrand Lake Ontario even as Ontario’s premier staged a very public show of resistance with a sign defending the lake’s historic name.

The US president signed an executive order on Thursday instructing the Interior Department to use “Lake America” for the body of water in federal US references, a move that comes against the backdrop of continuing trade tensions between Washington and Canada.

Trump’s order does not have the power to force Canada, or any international body, to recognize the new name, and Canadian leaders have already made clear they oppose the change.

Still, Trump showed no sign of backing down. In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, he shared an AI-generated video depicting him knocking down the original sign, replacing it with one that read “Welcome to Lake America,” and then dancing nearby.

The taunt landed only hours after Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled an actual sign at a waterfront park declaring: “Lake Ontario, Now and Always.”

Standing in front of the sign at 50 Point Conservation Area in Hamilton, Ford said he wanted to send Trump a message that Canadians are resilient, strong and ‘we will never, ever back down from a bully,’ the Globe and Mail reports.

‘The lake will always be known as Lake Ontario in Canada and the rest of the world, no matter what Trump calls it,’ he added. Ford then shared a similar message in a video posted to X. 

‘I’m here on the shores of beautiful Lake Ontario, a crown jewel of our province and our country,’ he said.

‘You may have heard that President Trump is trying to rename this lake, all because he doesn’t like Ontario and Canada standing up for ourselves.

‘But, let’s be serious: Long before President Trump, this lake was called Lake Ontario and long after President Trump is gone, it will still be called Lake Ontario.’

He then said he erected the sign ‘just in case President Trump or anyone else forgets.’

The premier’s remarks echoed those of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who on Thursday declared Canadians would continue calling it Lake Ontario ‘then, now and always.’

‘The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,”‘ Carney wrote on X.

‘The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.’

Carney then delivered a thinly veiled swipe at the dramatic changes taking place south of his border under Trump.

‘We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,’ he wrote. 

‘Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.’ 

Lake Ontario forms part of the international boundary between New York and the Canadian province of Ontario.

It has been jointly managed under the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty for more than a century. 

But when he signed the executive order on Thursday, Trump said he had contemplated the name change for a ‘long time.’

He then suggested he may not be finished tinkering with the map – joking that the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean could eventually find itself in his sights.

‘Actually, as you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico and we changed it, and now it’s very routinely the Gulf of America,’ Trump said.

‘So, if you think about it, we have a Gulf and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean. So, maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific.’

The announcement comes at a particularly explosive moment in US-Canadian relations. 

Trade negotiations between the longtime allies have collapsed, with Trump threatening punishing new tariffs on Canadian goods and Carney promising Canada will retaliate ‘dollar for dollar.’

Trump has said tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, automotive parts and steel will rise to 50 percent by 2027 as he attempts to force more manufacturing into the United States.

And while signing Thursday’s order, the president made clear that his dispute with Ottawa was far bigger than the name of a lake.

‘The whole Canadian thing has to come to a stop,’ Trump said. 

‘We are going to be doing tariffs on their cars that are coming in at a substantial level because we want to make the cars here.

‘They can make their own cars if they want and they can continue to make cars for Canada but we don’t want them to make cars for the United States of America. It’s very simple. Likewise many other products.’

Trump also accused Canada of relying on the United States for military protection without adequately compensating Washington.

‘We defend Canada for nothing, we don’t get anything,’ he said. ‘We love the people of Canada, but their representatives aren’t doing an appropriate job.’

The president has separately branded Canadian officials ‘nasty people’ and described the country as one of America’s most difficult trading partners.

‘People oftentimes they’ll ask me who’s the worst to deal with on trade, and I said that’s easy, Canada,’ Trump said.

‘They are the worst to trade, and they feel entitled, and just we can’t have that.’

SCARBOROUGH, Maine – White shark sightings have become a growing concern this summer in southern Maine, prompting local law enforcement to remind swimmers, surfers and shoreline visitors to stay alert after several sharks were documented on video and camera.

Marine researchers say there have been more reported white shark sightings this season, but they caution that the numbers may be influenced by sunny weather drawing larger crowds to the beach and by more people intentionally scanning the water for signs of sharks.

“I would say there’s no question that there’s been a lot more sightings this year. Does that translate into a higher number of sharks is a little bit of a nuanced question. There’s a lot of things to consider in there,” said Dr. Walt Golet, assistant professor of marine sciences at the University of Maine.

“While sighting reports are very helpful, the number of sightings reported to us is often influenced by nice weather and the number of people at the beach,” said Matt Davis, marine resource scientist at the Maine Department of Marine Resources. “We’ve had great weather this year for beach tourism, and we also have a number of people with drones actively looking for sharks, so sightings are high.”

Daryen Granata, harbor master and marine resource officer for the town of Scarborough, said the police department began receiving numerous shark sighting reports in early July. Several were captured on video.

“They were off of Pine Point Beach for a substantial amount of time,” said Granata. “They’ve kind of migrated now. They’re more off the Scarborough Beach State Park and Higgins Beach area at this point. We’re still seeing them on a daily basis. Still to this day, and it’s been, you know, three weeks at this point.”

Granata, who has lived in Scarborough for more than 30 years, said shark sightings have become much more common in recent years, especially sightings of juvenile sharks. But whether that means there are actually more sharks in the Gulf of Maine is less clear.

“We have all this drone technology. We have all the cell phone videos. We’ve got a lot of higher-grade technology than we did, you know, 10 or 15, 20 years ago. So we’re seeing them,” said Granata.

MORE STORY: How a Hero Teacher Saved 1,600 Children in Nepal Floods

Granata said the police department captures its own drone footage of sharks, as do independent photographers and beachgoers. Social media has added another stream of reported sightings, all of which can contribute to the perception that there are more sharks in the area.

“Previously, people weren’t looking for sharks with the same intensity or aerial equipment,” said Davis.

Researchers say white shark populations have been slowly recovering for decades after the federal government put protections in place in the 1990s. Maine’s seal population has also grown, providing a key food source for white sharks.

“It’s very possible that the number of white sharks we see now is more reflective of their natural population size, or at least the closest it’s been to the natural population size in several decades,” explained Davis. “Think of this as a population success story in that the ocean is regaining one of its apex predators to help balance the food chain.”

“If you protect the food and protect the predator, it makes sense that you see this rebound especially since the generation time for white sharks is about 25 to 30 years,” said Golet. “I also think that there’s a lot of bait around along the Maine coast in the form of striped bass and Atlantic menhaden, both of which are eaten by juvenile white sharks, which is what we have in high numbers.”

Researchers say warming ocean temperatures could eventually lead sharks to remain in the Gulf of Maine for longer periods. That could make frequent shark sightings a more regular occurrence along the coast.

“There are definitely more sharks in Maine than I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” said Kelsey Donohue, who’s lived in Scarborough her whole life. “Like growing up here, we used to joke around about sharks, but we would be like, ‘oh, we live in Maine, so we never see sharks!'”

“This really is the first time that I’ve heard for Pine Point that we had a shark sighting,” said Betty MacLeod, longtime Scarborough resident.

The Scarborough Police Department is urging people to stay vigilant while in the water.

Officials recommend that people swimming in areas where sharks have been spotted avoid dawn and dusk, when sharks can be more active, and never swim alone. They also recommend avoiding murky water and remaining in waist-deep water or shallower.

Beachgoers with open wounds should stay out of the water. Officials also advise swimmers to remove jewelry before entering the water.

“Just be cognizant of what you’re doing and where you are,” said Granata. “Just have good situational awareness, that’s all.”

Comedian Bill Maher took a swipe at liberals upset over President Donald Trump’s move to rename Lake Ontario, joking that the left is hardly unfamiliar with changing names to suit a political message.

During Friday’s opening monologue on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher riffed on Trump’s decision to rebrand one of the Great Lakes as “Lake America” amid a continuing trade dispute with Canada.

“Trump is so mad at Canada he renamed Lake Ontario Lake America,” Maher quipped. “Now I gotta buy a new globe again.”

“It’s like the fifth time it’s happened,” he continued, alluding to Trump’s earlier renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”

The joke came as trade negotiations between the U.S. and Canada collapsed late Friday, with Washington pressing ahead with 50% tariffs on Canadian goods.

Maher then took aim at liberal outrage over the president’s decision, suggesting critics of Trump’s move had embraced politically driven changes in terminology themselves.

“The liberals are very pissed at this,” Maher quipped. “They say you can’t just go around changing things to fit your political agenda. Just ask any Latinx birthing person.”

MORE STORY: Dick Van Dyke, 100, Stuns Fans With Upside-Down Workout in New Video

Trump signed the executive order renaming the lake from the Oval Office on Thursday, telling reporters, “This is official, effective immediately.”

Maher’s criticism was echoed by NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck, who told Fox News Digital that liberals’ willingness to embrace new terminology undermines their criticism of Trump’s latest decision.

“The fact that ‘Latinx’ and ‘birthing person’ are increasingly accepted as a punchline rather than a serious demographic statement should give all of us hope that ‘Woke 1’ is dead, and we’re never going back to that farcical time,” Houck told Fox News Digital.

“If only the liberal, elitist media could more consistently get the picture,” he continued. “The left needs to take a seat before they can say anything about anything being renamed.”

The sentiment was echoed by NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham.

“Liberals want to rename all kinds of things to satisfy their urge for wokeness,” Graham told Fox News Digital. “Just in this decade, they’ve pulled down all kinds of statues and renamed scads of military bases. What they hate is anything Trump does to add a patriotic pro-America tinge to something which they associate more with his ego than with patriotism. They see red  — as in a red MAGA cap.

“The media routinely genuflect ethnic and LGBTQ pressure groups and their demands to remake the language we’re all supposed to use,” he continued. “So, they can’t seriously object to renaming things. They just want to be the only people who get to rename things.”