On October 21, 2026, during a campaign rally in South Carolina, U.S. President Donald John Trump stated that he did not know how President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo went from practicing ballet to leading the government of Mexico. The event took place in the lead-up to the election on November 3 of that same year.
“She was a ballet dancer. I don’t know how the hell she went from being a dancer to President of Mexico! How the hell did that happen? She was a ballet dancer. A beautiful woman, actually,” Trump said to his supporters, whom he urged to back the Republican Party in the elections.
The remark came during a portion of his speech in which Trump recounted his 2025 decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” within U.S. internal nomenclature. According to his account, the Mexican president called him to ask that he reconsider.
“I got a call from the President of Mexico. She’s a really good woman. A pleasant woman. She has one of the most beautiful voices. I told her, ‘Your voice is absolutely beautiful.’ And it’s true—she has a lovely voice,” Trump said. “When she saw that I had changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico, [Sheinbaum] called me and said, ‘No, no, Mr. President. No, please, please, please, Mr. President. Tell me you’re joking.’ I replied, ‘No, no, ma’am. I’m not joking. I’m really not joking.’ And I went through with it [the change],” he added.
The head of the Mexican federal executive branch had mentioned her background in classical dance in August 2026, during one of her morning press conferences. “As a child, I spent a lot of time doing ballet, and later, when I entered the Faculty (of Sciences at UNAM)—when I had to choose between being a ballerina and a physicist—I decided to become a physicist. From there, I went to the complete opposite extreme and took up rowing,” she stated at the time, reflecting on her education at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
Despite the executive order signed by Trump in 2025, “Gulf of Mexico” remains the official designation within the international system for the portion of the Atlantic Ocean shared by Mexico, the United States, and Cuba.
The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO)—established in 1921 and based in the Principality of Monaco—is the body that determines the names of seas and oceans internationally. Both the United States and Mexico are members, and as of the time of the rally, the IHO had not issued any ruling regarding a name change.
