Yesterday the United States launched a raid against some alleged ISIS unit in Nigeria. Maybe Nigeria approved of their territory being used as a training exercise by the United States military, maybe they didn't.

But what's really significant about the event was how it was announced, which was a long, somewhat garbled and cliche-ridden remark from Donald Trump on the website that he personally owns.

In this respect, I am forced to admit that Donald Trump has been the most transformative President since FDR.

Think I'm kidding? I'm not kidding at all.

FDR changed the scope and definition of the federal government's role to a degree never previously realized or even attempted. The banking system, the revenue system, the welfare system — all these systems and many others would never be the same and would more or less continue to operate today in the way they started operating after 1933.

FDR was also the first President to realize the immense power and influence which a national political leader could impose over the entire country by taking advantage of a new electronic media technology (i.e., radio) which got him into nearly every American home with the 31 'fireside chats' he delivered between 1933 and 1944.

From FDR until Donald Trump, the number of federal agencies more than doubled in size but the national population almost tripled over the same ninety years. And while some of the more recent agencies like HHS, Department of Energy and Homeland Security did things that weren't done before, the manner in which these activities were explained by the Chief Executive to the American people remained basically the same.

Then along comes Donald Trump. And he not only began communicating directly to everyone on a daily, indeed hourly basis, but he now has both personalized and privatized his presence not just within American society, but for that matter, throughout the entire globe.

I found out about the raid against ISIS in Nigeria when I flipped on my laptop this morning and saw a headline on the Google aggregating news feed that I read every day.

How did Google learn about the attack? From the comment which appeared on Trump's website last night.

And I'm not talking about some government website run out of the White House or some other publicly managed venue. I'm talking about a private website which surrounded Trump's message with a couple of ads for a patent medicine and some women's shoes.

According to the last financial filing, Truth Social has yet to show a profit but its revenue for 2025 is almost $5 million bucks. That's money which all goes into Trump's billfold, with not one dime reflecting the fact that the content of this website is based on the announcements Trump makes which all reflect his role as a public employee, announcements which every other President released on relevant, government-owned media sites.

Every day I get yet another complaint by some liberal spieler like Robert Reich or Paul Krugman about Trump is a 'fascist,' or an 'authoritarian,' or a 'threat to democracy,' but I have yet to see any of these intellectual thought-leaders say anything about how Trump has transformed the most important aspect of daily political life, which is what we are told about current events by the people whose behavior creates those events.

The only liberal politician who seems to understand how to be an effective user of social media is the guy who's going to take over City Hall in New York next week. But Zohran Mamdani is just a local story and already the national media has more or less forgotten that he exists.

Know what? I've been saying this same, goddamn thing now for more than ten years and I seem to be basically talking to myself.

Enough is enough, or as Grandpa would say, 'ze hais?' (read: Get it?)