Fake audio claims Trump wants to rename DC the 'District of America'

In March 2025, about two months after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, a rumor circulated online alleging that he also wanted to rename the District of Columbia to the "District of America."

Users shared the rumor on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok and X — sometimes with an audio recording supposedly depicting Trump advocating for the name change.

However, the recording was not real and there was no evidence of the president wanting to rename the district. A social media user created the audio recording with an artificial intelligence (AI) tool. The voice sounded similar to Trump's but featured some slight differences in its tone and manner of speaking.

The fake recording played on a hypothetical scenario in which Trump confused the "Columbia" in the "District of Columbia" for the differently-spelled, South American country of Colombia. The fake Trump voice said:

No more Washington, D.C. I hate it. It makes no sense. They call it the District of Columbia. It's got nothing to do with Colombia. It's nowhere near Colombia. From now on, it will be Washington, D.A., District of America. No more of this Columbia nonsense.

TikTok user @whmole — a handle meaning "White House mole" — appeared to be the creator of the audio. However, a check of the account on March 14 displayed the message "Couldn't find this account," which meant its videos and inbox for direct messaging were no longer accessible. (We reached out to TikTok to ask whether the company removed the @whmole account or if the user deactivated the page on their own, and a representative said TikTok was looking into the matter.)

Webpage-archiving websites did not host any archived versions of the @whmole account's page. That said, before the account was deactivated, Snopes confirmed it was the source of several videos featuring fake, AI-generated audio clips of Trump — similar to the recording in question.

Also, a separate TikTok video with the audio of Trump supposedly talking about renaming the district displayed a watermark for @whmole, an indication that account was the recording's creator. That video's on-screen caption read, "Trump CAUGHT on a HOT MIC. Getting rid of Washington D.C.??! Wed March 12 2025. Wait til the end...."

Look out for other audio recordings with the @whmole watermark, including clips that supposedly depict Trump comparing his adviser Elon Musk to "Isaac Neutron" rather than English physicist Isaac Newton and advocating for an end to daylight saving time because people "die faster" when the clock moves an hour forward.