Trolling Trump, Pritzker jokingly renames Lake Michigan, annexes Green Bay
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Tongue firmly in cheek, Gov. JB Pritzker trolled President Donald Trump on Friday, declaring Lake Michigan would be renamed "Lake Illinois," and jokingly annexing Green Bay from Wisconsin.
"I am here today to make an important announcement. The world's finest geographers, experts who study the Earth's natural environment, have concluded a decades-long council, and determined that a Great Lake deserves to be named after a great state," Pritzker said in a minute-long video posted to his campaign social media accounts. "So today, I'm issuing a proclamation declaring that hereinafter, Lake Michigan shall be known as Lake Illinois."
The governor said his proclamation has been sent to Google "so the world's maps reflect this momentous change."
The post was a joke clearly aimed at President Trump, who on his first day in office last month signed an executive order calling for renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
Pritzker also took a shot at President Trump's claim that the U.S. needs to take control of Greenland to protect national security, by declaring "Illinois will now be annexing Green Bay to protect itself against enemies, foreign and domestic."
The governor ended his straight-faced video by saying he's planning "an important announcement next week regarding the Mississippi River."
Pritzker's video came out a day after the Trump administration sued Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, claiming sanctuary laws have illegally interfered with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
At an unrelated news conference on Friday, Pritzker called the Justice Department lawsuit "a massive effort to distract from what they are doing across the country to take away things that working-class, middle-class people, families, the most vulnerable, really need."
"Maybe they put up with this kind of garbage in Florida, which is the home state of the head of the DOJ, but in Illinois, we have grit, we are tough, we are strong, and Donald Trump has no idea what he's up against when he attacks Illinois," Pritzker said.
