Dean Obeidallah, a comedian and columnist who posts to a following of one hundred forty-six thousand on X, called for President Donald Trump to be arrested and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay over the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, writing that neither his demand nor the state renaming he was responding to would come to pass.
Obeidallah was reacting to claims, widely circulated in coverage Monday, that Trump had called on New Mexico to change its name to "New America." In his post, Obeidallah wrote that Trump "Calls for New Mexico to Be Renamed 'New America,'" adding, "And I call for Trump to be arrested and imprisoned at Gitmo for his Jan 6 terrorist attack. But neither is happening."
The renaming demand attributed to the president was reported across multiple outlets. CNN Politics reported that Trump on Monday called on New Mexico to change its name to "New America," describing it as the latest example of him seeking geographical name changes that fit his political agenda. The Washington Post reported that while Trump can use executive authority to rename bodies of water and other geographic features, he lacks authority to rename New Mexico or other states. The New Republic characterized the episode as Trump worrying about New Mexico's name two weeks out from an election.
According to those accounts, Trump made the call in a social media post, claiming the move would boost home values, raise incomes, and put an end to what he called the state's "crooked elections." Another report described the president floating the idea first in September, after renaming Lake Ontario as "Lake America."
The reaction from Obeidallah folded the renaming claim into the long-running Democratic grievance over the Capitol breach, treating the two as comparable demands destined for the same fate. His post did not elaborate on the legal basis for prosecution at the naval base in Cuba, where the United States has for years held detainees in connection with the war on terror.
Trump has faced sustained criticism from opponents over the events of January 6, when a crowd supporting him overran the Capitol as Congress met to certify the 2020 electoral results. His supporters have argued that his remarks that day did not amount to an instruction to storm the building, and he has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
The name-change story moved quickly through political media Monday and Tuesday, with CNN, the Washington Post, The New Republic and others carrying versions of the same claim within hours of one another, and the dispute over whether a president may rename a state drawing commentary alongside the underlying remark itself.
Next News Network could not independently verify the claim that Trump called for New Mexico to be renamed "New America."
The White House has not issued a formal statement on the renaming proposal, and no legislation or executive action on the matter has been announced.
Our Take
Leave it to the left to turn a naming suggestion into a fresh round of January 6 theater. Dean Obeidallah did not engage the substance of what Trump actually proposed — a state name, home values, election integrity — he simply reached for the loudest available cudgel and demanded the president be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. That is not argument; it is performance, and it is the same performance the online left has been running since 2021.
Note also what Obeidallah conceded in his own post: he does not believe his demand will happen. He said so plainly. What remains is a rhetorical gesture aimed at an audience that already agrees with him, and media outlets that treated the renaming remark as a five-alarm story were only too happy to supply the megaphone.
The president's critics have every right to object to his proposals. But calling for the imprisonment of a political opponent at a military detention facility is not a policy position, and voters should treat it as what it is — a signal of how little the other side has left to offer.
