DALLAS — The Republican Party of New Mexico’s executive Director, Leticia Munoz, brushed off President Donald Trump’s floated renaming of the border state to “New America.”
Munoz, who has been the state party’s executive director for over three years, told the Washington Examiner in a brief interview after the president’s night one speech at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas that what New Mexico needs is a “new governor, not so much a new name.”
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-AZ), who has led the state since 2019, rejected Trump’s floated name change earlier this week, saying that “New Mexico’s name isn’t up for debate — it’s been ours since before the United States existed.”
“While the President tries to distract Americans from his disastrous war in Iran, gas prices keep soaring. Americans are also spending more at the grocery store, losing access to health care, and wondering if they’ll ever be able to afford a home,” Grisham wrote.
Munoz said Trump’s proposed renaming of the Land of Enchantment was “parody” and that the New Mexico delegation enjoyed the humor.
“We think it’s funny,” Munoz said. “We understand President Trump. We’ve always understood him since he was on Twitter. You know, he loves to trigger people, and I just think it’s parody with everything that they’ve been renaming. So, we just take it in stride.”
Trump has previously moved to change the names of two bodies of water, having recently renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America and before that the “Gulf of Mexico” to the Gulf of America.
LIVE UPDATES: REPUBLICANS GATHER IN DALLAS FOR FIRST-EVER GOP MIDTERM CONVENTION
But changing the name of a state could prove more difficult for the president, as New Mexico’s name is written into the state’s constitution.
“I’m sure that he knows that there’s a lot of obstacles he’ll need to go through to change the name,” Munoz said. “It’s not like changing, you know, the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. You know what I mean? That’s so much different than changing a state.”