It was one of those things where people who took Donald Trump literally didn’t take him seriously until he actually did it.

In the run-up to his inauguration, the president-elect brought up the idea of renaming the large body of water along our southern coast the Gulf of America. He repeated the promise in his inaugural address and formally signed the executive order to do so on his way to the Super Bowl a week ago Sunday. A day later, Google Maps made news by including the change on its maps.

It’s nothing new for various localities to have different names for geographic points. As an example, at the same time as Trump renamed the Gulf, he also restored the moniker of Mount McKinley for America’s tallest mountain. It became formally known as Denali in 2015 after Interior Secretary Sally Jewell used her authority after years of argument over the name between interests from Alaska and Ohio, President McKinley’s home state. (Barack Obama was also fine with the revision, and the Board of Geographic Names, which has original jurisdiction as part of the Department of the Interior under Jewell, did not object to the change.) Formally, the executive order from Trump directed the current members of the Board to change the name to Gulf of America, which they did a few days into Trump’s term.

While Mexico disapproves of the Gulf of America, the Associated Press points out that it calls the river we know as the Rio Grande by the name Rio Bravo.

Yet the AP is a news organization that, thus far, has refused to go along with Trump’s executive order. While lyricists like John Cougar Mellencamp can’t sing “Pink Houses” and stay in rhyme without referring to the Gulf of Mexico, the AP’s reticence on the subject has drawn the punishment of being banished from the White House for certain press events. “While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One,” said White House Assistant Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich. He added that, since the AP won’t play by the new rules, its traditional space would be opened up to one of the “many thousands” of reporters who had heretofore not had the privilege of covering the White House. AP staff would retain their credentials to the White House complex.

As CBS News notes, “The AP is a regular representative in the White House press pool, the rotating group of reporters, videographers and photographers who cover the president daily and travel with him whenever he leaves White House grounds. The AP is a news wire service that covers the globe, and local newspapers have increasingly relied on it and other syndicated news outlets as local newsrooms undergone staffing reductions. The AP estimates 4 billion people read its news every day, and it has journalists in nearly 100 countries.” That worldwide reach is why the AP hasn’t adopted the name change, it claims.

What’s hilarious about the whole thing is that the AP and every other Leftmedia outlet will immediately adopt the new name of a gender-confused person, lest they be accused of “deadnaming” that person. There is evidently no thought given, however, to deadnaming the Gulf of America.

Still, some Trump backers see this imbroglio as a case where Trump’s ego is making an issue out of something that, on the surface, is as petty as “you say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.”

“The federal government is telling reporters to cover things the way it wants them to and use the word choice it likes or suffer the consequences,” journalist Brad Polumbo stated in a recent Washington Examiner op-ed. “That’s not OK, and it’s not a precedent Republicans should want to set. It may also be unconstitutional.”

Polumbo adds, “Under this same thought process, a future Democratic administration could just as easily deny access to Fox News, Breitbart News, or other right-of-center media outlets if they, for example, refuse to use the ‘correct’ pronouns for a transgender Democratic official. If you don’t want progressive presidents punishing conservative media for their coverage choices, you can’t support Trump doing so to liberal-leaning media outlets.”

Having lived through the last administration, though, it’s evident that Trump is just fighting fire with fire. That’s what he was elected to do. Beating leftists at their own game is just a bonus.

National Review’s Philip Klein makes another salient point, arguing, “In modern times, White House events are broadcast on TV and readily available on demand to anybody with a smartphone or access to an internet connection. President Trump has sat for hours of questions from reporters from a variety of outlets since taking office, so it isn’t as if nobody gets to challenge the president on anything without the AP.”

It’s unlikely that this matter will not be elevated to the Supreme Court because the AP doesn’t have the constitutional right to maintain its heretofore privileged position in the White House press pecking order forever. However, there is indeed a case to be made that this is not the hill for Trump to fight on, either. It certainly cedes some of the scant moral high ground that’s left around The Swamp.

As events pass and the whirlwind of Trump’s presidency continues on, though, it’s likely the AP and Trump will come to an understanding because, quite frankly, the AP needs Trump more than he needs them. Just go read an AP article, and you’ll be hit up for a donation because legacy media isn’t a method to print money from advertisers anymore. In the meantime, we will get to hear a voice that, prior to this incident, may never have been heard because it wasn’t coming from someone deemed acceptable to the AP-backing White House Correspondents’ Association.

Now, if we can enhance energy exploration in the newly renamed Gulf of America, we can be on to something.