We are now almost two full years into the Donald Trump runaway-freight-train-horror-show that passes for his presidency.

Not only is he destined to go down as the worst American president in history, he will have set the bar so low that no future president will challenge for that dubious honour as long as he or she doesn’t try to declare martial law and start a military coup that turns the United States into a dictatorship.

That is the certain legacy Trump faces. He is destined to be remembered as a disgrace to the office he holds and to his country as a whole.

There is, I think, only one way to avoid the terrible judgment of history.

He should book a nationally televised address, sit behind his desk in the Oval Office, and read these words from the teleprompter.

“My fellow Americans. I’m sorry. I never expected it to go this far.

When I announced that I was running for president, I never expected to win. I never even expected to be nominated. I just thought a few months of constant media coverage would boost my business profile and make me a few million dollars richer.

I did everything I could think of to lose. I made outrageous statements. I called Mexican immigrants ‘rapists’. I said I would ban all Muslims from entering the country. I said I would build a concrete wall across our southern border.

I came up with silly names for people. ‘Crooked Hillary’, ‘Lyin’ Ted’. How could I know you would take me seriously?

Even being caught on tape crudely bragging about assaulting women didn’t turn off enough of you voters.

So suddenly I was your president.

Even then, I never read a briefing note, so I just made up stuff. I had no idea why our allies should be treated differently from our enemies.

I said Canada was a national security threat. Canada!

I enjoyed fighting with journalists and if they reported facts I didn’t like I just called it’ ‘fake news’ and a lot of you believed me instead of them.

I discovered I could say anything at all, without any regard to the truth. I went to Iraq a couple of months ago and told the troops I had won them their first pay raise in ten years and that it was a ten per cent raise. I made that up on the fly. I didn’t know anything about military pay, but it didn’t matter. They cheered when I said that. I could have told them their next posting was going to be on Saturn and they would have cheered. That, my friends, is intoxicating power.

I tried to take away medical coverage from those who needed it the most.

I passed a tax bill that made richer people even richer.

And still, here I am. I’m the president. No one in my party stood up to me. A few cabinet secretaries made nuisances of themselves, but getting rid of them was pretty easy. The rest of them treated me like a genius, just because I said I was one.

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But now, the time has come to end all of this.

I am not qualified to be your president. I am in way over my head. I am not Lincoln or Jefferson. I am not either of the Roosevelts. I am not even James Buchanan or George W. Bush.

Running the world’s most important democracy is not like running a business. Not everything can be reduced to a balance sheet.

And so, as of noon tomorrow I will resign the presidency.

I am not the man for the job.

I am truly sorry.”

I know this is not going to happen, but someone who truly cares about Donald Trump should tell him this is the one and only way to salvage his reputation. He will get credit for doing the right thing.

Resigning one step ahead of impeachment or indictment won’t do the trick.

He has to step aside before the pitchforks are at his back.

He has to confess that his joke candidacy just got carried away.

He has to recognize that he has done terrible damage to his country, and only by his leaving can a once great America be made great again.

Mark Bulgutch is the former senior executive producer of CBC News. He teaches journalism at Ryerson University and is the author of, That’s Why I’m a Journalist.

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