NEW YORK — In a satire about President Trump renaming parts of America through executive orders, a late night comedian included the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Jimmy Fallon, the host of NBC’s Tonight Show, started by mentioning that Trump signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” and renaming Denali as “Mount McKinley.” Which is true.
What is false is what Fallon said next — tongue-in-cheek — about our American territory.
‘Yeah, he’s serious about renaming things,” Fallon cracked. “And he’s not done there. Check out some of these other orders: He’s changing San Antonio … to Saint Tony. He’s changing New York … to Trumpsylvania. Next up. He’s making the Rocky Mountains … the Sylvester Stallone Mountains. Here’s another one yet. The U.S. Virgin Islands … are now the Mike Pence Islands.”
The joke about the Rocky Mountains becoming the Sylvester Stallone Mountains garnered the most laughs and cheers from the live studio audience.
While the bit about the U.S. Virgin Islands got the most mixed reaction from the crowd — and a few gasps.
The good news is that Jimmy Fallon only picked four places in the United States to wisecrack about — and the USVI was one of them.
The bad news is that the joke about the U.S. Virgin Islands was the humor that seemed to fall the most flat.
St. Thomas St. John, St. Croix and Water Island are the major islands comprising the American territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The Tonight Show is recorded weekdays in Studio 6B at the Rockefeller Center in New York City.
