Its about tactics - countries with autocratic leaders usually employ similar tactics where they e.g.

1. make a big change to some segment of law (more/less important - but has to be something that hits everyone or doesn’t make sense), so the media reports on that, then make changes to it again (due to public pressure), so that media and population gets these topics in waves, just so they make everyone blind to their corruption games they play in the background,
2. or they use some politician from their party/coalition to stir the pot in their ministry they lead by playing drama queens by accusing the opposition of corruption,
3. or they leave a “less important” political role to a crazy person, they do stupid shit that takes years to fix and you essentially have constant drama and info taking away everyones attention from the important stuff.
4. etc etc

But you get the point - calling it Gulf of America essentially gives you free patriotic bonus points from your followers and also makes your opposition / people invest in something that is, in the end, total waste of time (time which could be used for something else, like educating these populist/autocratic/however you call it tactics to everyone, so that your average Joe doesn’t get fooled by it so easily).