The rumor spread quickly against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s recent wave of official geographic renaming initiatives.
WASHINGTON, DC: Amid an ongoing series of geographic renamings and trade tensions involving Canada, a viral social media post claimed that President Donald Trump had purchased Montreal’s airport and rebranded it as ‘Trump International Airport.’ The assertion quickly triggered widespread amusement, debate, and the need for verification.
The Claim: Trump announced the renaming of Montreal International Airport to ‘Trump International Airport’
The rumor originated from a circulating screenshot purporting to show a message published by the president on his official Truth Social account.
The fabricated message read, “Governor Mark Carney has begun the process of selling off Canada’s infrastructures, such as highways and airports. For this reason, I have officially purchased the former ‘Pierre Elliott Trudeau’ airport in Montreal, Canada, and renamed it to Trump International Airport. Thank you for your attention in this matter!”
This fictitious text was paired with an artificial intelligence-generated image depicting an airport facility bearing the signage ‘TRUMP INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT.’
Within a short span, the image garnered more than a million views, drawing mixed reactions. While many Canadian social media users mocked the notion, others questioned whether the announcement was genuine.
Fact Check: No such statement exists on Trump’s official channels
In reality, the circulating screenshot is entirely fraudulent; no such publication appears on any of Trump’s official social media profiles.
Searches on his Truth Social page for keywords from the alleged text returned zero results. Furthermore, automated tracking accounts on X that consistently archive all of Trump’s online posts captured no record of this statement.
Had a sitting US president actually claimed to purchase a major international airport in Canada, major news outlets would have immediately covered it. Comprehensive searches of news databases found no credible reports indicating that such a message was ever published and subsequently deleted.
Background: A trend of geographic renaming amid U.S.-Canada friction
The plausibility of the fake post—at least to some online users—stemmed from the administration’s recent name-changing initiatives implemented during trade disputes and tariff escalations with northern neighbors.
Recent actions in this campaign include a signed executive order instructing federal agencies to adopt the designation “Gulf of America” in place of the Gulf of Mexico, alongside efforts to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”
“As you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico, we changed it, and now it’s very routinely the Gulf of America,” Trump noted regarding the policy.
Additionally, the president has publicly floated the idea of eventually renaming both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in future social media commentary.