Nick Catoggio, a conservative writer at The Dispatch and a longtime critic of President Donald Trump, delivered an unusually scathing rebuke of the president's recent behavior, culminating in his characterization of the White House as led by an "impotent" "man-baby." Catoggio, who wrote for years at the conservative blog Hot Air under the pseudonym "Allahpundit" before joining The Dispatch, has been one of the most prominent anti-Trump voices on the right, making the force of his latest critique notable but not a departure from his broader trajectory.

Among the incidents drawing Catoggio's ire was Trump's firing earlier this year of Army chief of staff Gen. Randy George. The dismissal came in part because George refused to rescind the promotion recommendations he had made on behalf of several officers — two of them Black and two of them women. In Pete Hegseth's "anti-DEI" military, Catoggio argued, those recommendations rendered the officers "presumptively unqualified."

"Firing a capable officer like Randy George is bad. Firing him because he didn't show proper respect for Kid Rock is so unbearably humiliating for the United States that I feel it in my chest," Catoggio wrote. "'Shameful' isn't the right word, as shame implies a sense of guilt over some serious offense for which you feel directly or indirectly responsible. … The George episode isn't so much shameful as it is pathetic. It betrays a bratty juvenile fatuousness that's only possible in political leaders who fundamentally don't grasp, or actively disdain, the concept of dignity."

While America has experienced periods of weakness, Catoggio said, it has never been a laughingstock in his lifetime — at least not before "Lake America."

"If the 'Gulf of America' rebrand was a declaration of triumph, the targeting of Lake Ontario is a declaration of defeat," Catoggio wrote. "It was inspired, of course, by the stupid-even-for-him new trade war the president has launched against Canada. … [C]hanging the name of Lake Ontario reeks of impotence and humiliation. It's transparently an act of spite by a man-baby who's lashing out after failing to get his way. And it's a boost for his domestic opponents on the left, who already planned to campaign this fall on the idea that the president is too absorbed with trivial idiocy like ballrooms — and now lakes — to address the problems he was elected to solve." The renaming follows the same pattern as the administration's earlier order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America," a move that formalized a symbolic geographic rebrand by executive action rather than through the informal political pressure campaigns of earlier eras.

Catoggio also distinguished the move from earlier nationalist gestures, such as the right's embrace of "freedom fries" to spite France in the early days of the Iraq war. That episode, he noted, was an "informal grassroots attempt to change the culture by pressuring people not to use the word 'French.'"

"But 'Lake America'? That's an official order from the president," Catoggio said. "Let the culture take note."

Beyond its "bratty" quality, Catoggio described the Lake America "fiasco" as ultimately an act of cowardice.

"[C]ommitted nationalists aren't squeamish about sacrifice and immiseration. If they wanted to fight a trade war with Canada, they'd go a lot further in escalating than hollow gestures involving lake names," he wrote. "Trump is squeamish, though. His brand of 'luxury nationalism' comes packaged with a con man's promise that Americans will suffer no enduring hardship from his agenda. He couldn't be any plainer than he's been this summer about how frightened he is by what protracted economic suffering caused by his policies might do to his legacy."

According to Catoggio, Trump needs ways to appear tough that cost Americans nothing, and erasing the word "Ontario" from the Great Lakes amounts to "zero-calorie nationalism — unappealing, unsatisfying, but chauvinistically nourishing with little downside." The critique lands amid an ongoing broader conflict between Trump and Canada over trade, in which the president has imposed tariffs and at times floated making Canada the "51st state" — rhetoric that Canadian officials have consistently rejected.

"Only a pathetic and ignorant people would have fallen for [what Trump sells]," Catoggio concluded, "and only a really pathetic and really ignorant people would have fallen for it twice. Say what you will about Trump, but don't ever say that he hasn't delivered what Americans voted for."