President Donald Trump on Tuesday delivered a sudden overview of the several “different names” for the United Kingdom — and it appears he hasn’t corrected course from his past geographical goofs.
Trump, following his first meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, spoke on the “tremendous patriotism in Britain” before rattling off names associated with “it.”
“You call it United Kingdom, Britain; they call it sometimes England. They go back to the old — it’s got more names than any other place in the world, right?” said Trump as Burnham briefly chuckled and looked down while wringing his hands.
“And sometimes they have to be educated as to what ….” (Check out the clip.)
The term Britain has been used colloquially to refer to the United Kingdom, the country that consists of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
That’s entirely separate from Great Britain, or the island that England, Scotland and Wales call home.
England, however, is just England. Not the U.K., Britain or Great Britain.
(It’s worth noting that some outside of the U.K. — like Trump — have conflated the terms.)
Brendan Smialowski via Getty Images
In a 2018 interview with Piers Morgan, Trump made a similar mistake in suggesting that “it” — as in the U.K. — could be referred to as England, the U.K. or Great Britain.
“You know Great Britain and the United Kingdom aren’t exactly the same thing?” asked Morgan in his interview with Trump for the Daily Mail.
“Right, yeah. You know I know, but a lot of people don’t know that. But you have lots of different names,” Trump replied.
The knower-in-chief revived his U.K. names line at a Pennsylvania rally just a few weeks later.
Critics on X schooled the president on Tuesday. Among them was journalist Mehdi Hasan, who wrote, “It is as ever difficult to overstate Trump’s dumbness and ignorance.”
One user teased the president using one of his go-to rally remarks, declaring, “You get a Dumb with a ‘B.’ in 4th grade geography.”
And @DecodingFoxNews pointed out that Trump’s mother, Mary Anne Trump, was a Scottish immigrant.
“You’d think he’d know the difference between England and the UK. I guess not,” the post read.