Where Have You Gone, Joe — I mean, Dark Brandon?

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you

Hi, Joe. You still alive?

Hey, I get it. After all these years in politics, you deserve some peace and quiet.

You’ve put together many accomplishments as president. Things that will not be noticed until long after you have retired in the Hamptons or wherever you end up on January 21. It would take a thirty-minute read to cover all of the things you did while in office.

Things like a yearly Medicare $2,000 prescription drugs cap that older voters are only noticing now. Massive growth in the number of new high-tech factories that people may never notice, much less give you credit for.

An economic boom that is about to be torched by the incoming administration. Again. By extended tariffs of all things, because his economic advisors aren’t economists. They’re TechNutBros like Marc Andreessen, who built a free browser once and magically collected billions for his efforts, but wants more.

Andreesen here tries to develop a relationship between tariffs and the industrial revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. For a refutation of this argument, google the name of any real economist + “tariffs.” I’d start with Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, since he’s here on Substack.

We all know the cycle. A Democratic president enters office, fixes the economy that was broken by the Republican predecessor, the next Republican gets the credit for it because of lag time, breaks things again, and the cycle repeats.

It’s okay. We’re all pretty used to this.

But, Joe, we need you to do one more thing. Because this is different. Because what is on the horizon isn’t the usual Republican incompetence. It goes much further, and you know it does.

Base image public domain; image updated by author

So you need to act.

Now.

I’m not a legal scholar. I’m no Joyce Vance. I enjoy history, but I’m not a history professor like Heather Cox Richardson, either. So I don't know all the legal issues or historical ramifications behind what must be done.

But, unlike MAGA, I’m not completely blind to history. I did pretty well with my history essays in college, although not so well on multiple-choice tests, because my memory sucks, probably because of a bit too much smoke-a-dope in my youth:

Image of real test questions from college. No, really! Would I lie to my lovely readers just for a few more clicks and/or restacks? Me???? Never.

Having said that, though, I understand the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling well enough to know that you can, and should, do something scary to challenge it and force SCOTUS’s hands.

I don’t have to be Ruth Gator Binsburg¹ to know that the ruling gives you full immunity to any action you take as long as it is directly associated with your presidential duties.

SCOTUS’s gift of full immunity offers you many juicy options. Because you are a much better man than me, you will not opt for the juiciest ones.

You won’t, for example, issue an executive order banning the use of Pepe the Frog as an avatar and the Twitter/X name Kekius Maximus.² Even if you do, and you should, your order won’t banish violators to the Mexican state of Durango wearing nothing but board shorts and a t-shirt that says, “The Sinaloa Cartel can suck it” while confined to the inside of a Cybertruck full of fireworks.

Screenshot from the ever nuttier Muskovite, who changed his avatar and screen name to more honestly reflect his apartheid leanings (YES, HE REALLY DID THIS).

Because you are a better man than I, you won’t issue an executive order decreeing a mud wrestling tournament between Laura Loomer and Vivek Ramasmarmy that sentences the loser (or looser, if using MAGA English) to permanent residency with JD Vance.

You seem like a fairly normal person, unlike me, so I doubt you’d do a soft invasion of Greenland just to snatch their polar bears (disclaimer: I have no idea if Greenland has polar bears — they probably don’t because the whole fucking place is melting).

Even though you should, you won’t order a tribunal with the incoming predator-in-chief sitting in the middle of a circle of his 26 female accusers, with Blake Lively and E. Jean Carroll as the presiding judges. In Madison Square Garden. Nationally televised. Ticket proceeds to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

But, my dude. You gotta do something.

Put your best minds on the case to devise an executive order that takes full advantage of SCOTUS’s immunity ruling before Humpty Dumpty does it in a way that terrifies a witless nation. Do something that will trigger an immediate challenge to the ruling. Force SCOTUS to recognize the depravity and unconstitutionality of the ruling.

Do something wild. Stop acting like a typical lounging Democrat absorbing punch after MAGA punch. Pretend for a day that you're Jasmine Crockett for fuck’s sake.

Your legacy depends on this.

Everything else you’ve done will be forgotten if you don’t.

If you’re not willing to do it, resign so that Kamala can.

It’s that important, Joe.

Don’t disappear on us now.

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Share and restack if you agree, my friends. Happy New Year! And thanks for reading!

Notes

You can do your part to harass the incoming Predator in Chief by sending an empty envelope addressed thusly to Mar-a-Lago:

1. Yeah, I don’t know who that is, either, other than a subtle jab at MAGA always getting things wrong.

2. Elon Musk changed his avatar to Pepe the Frog and his profile name to Kekius Maximus, both of which are established far-right references: Hawkinson, Katie. 2025. “Musk Changes X Handle to Kekius Maximus. What Does It Mean?” The Independent. January 2, 2025. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-name-change-social-media-kekius-maximus-b2672708.html.