But if Trump really does want Baldwin to stop mocking him, he can make it happen. Baldwin revealed how in an Atlantic cover story published Tuesday:

Baldwin sometimes wishes that Trump would appear next to him on “SNL,” the way Tony Bennett did years ago, reclaiming his own voice and in the process maybe helping Baldwin do the same.

“If he was smart, he’d show up this week,” Baldwin says. “It would probably be over. He could end it. If he showed up.”

Baldwin previously offered to end it if Trump would release his tax returns, so there are actually two ways the president could stop the ridicule.

The common theme is that Trump would have to humble himself. He would have to succumb to media pressure to make his tax documents public or participate in his own satirization. Neither seems likely.

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Trump can take a joke, but he has limits. He hosted SNL in November 2015, during the Republican primary, and endured some ribbing at the hands of other impersonators, Darrell Hammond and Taran Killam.

Baldwin's depiction of Trump is different, however. Chris Jones, who wrote the Atlantic profile of Baldwin, described it as a “nightmarish goof on Trump, a distillation of everything gross about him, boiled clean of any remnant that could be mistaken for competence or redemption.”

“Baldwin’s Trump isn’t an impersonation,” Jones added. “He saves his more accurate work for Tony Bennett, for Robert De Niro, for Al Pacino — for men he loves and admires. Those are mischiefs, born of appreciation. His Trump is mimicry, born of disgust.”

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Trump announced in February that he would skip this month's White House correspondents' dinner, an event that traditionally features a comedian making fun of the president. Trump made the decision even before the White House Correspondents' Association picked Hasan Minhaj, a fierce critic of the president, to host the dinner.

“I don't think that we should fake it,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer explained last week, “going to a dinner where you sit around, and they pretend everything is hunky-dory.”

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Trump clearly has no interest in allowing himself to be the butt of harsh jokes. What's interesting about Baldwin's latest offer is the suggestion that Trump's sensitivity is an essential element of the humor — that people laugh, in part, because they know Baldwin's impression annoys the president and would suddenly find the bit less funny if Trump were cool with it.