With too many things now going wrong for Donald Trump to list, and virtually nothing going right for him, he’s been acting as if he’s on the verge of giving up. His confident bluster has now largely been replaced with sullen tweets, confused messaging, the departure of most of his advisers, even as his approval rating continues to scrape rock bottom. Now comes an inside report that Donald Trump is in preliminary talks about resigning his office.

That’s the word from political insider Jon Cooper the well connected Chairman of the Democratic Coalition Against Trump. Here’s what he shared on Monday: “Source who’s been accurate in past tells me there have been some preliminary talks in WH re POTUS resigning. Mostly hypothetical what-ifs” (link). He didn’t go into additional detail, but the timing of such a development makes sense. Trump just gave a speech about Afghanistan which seemed almost physically painful for him because he had to admit he’d been wrong about it all along. This also ties into other confirmed reports of Trump hinting that he wants to resign.

Back in late June, Politico mentioned in the final paragraph of one of its articles that Donald Trump had been telling his friends and advisers that he wants to resign but that he fears being seen as a quitter like Richard Nixon (link). Eight weeks later, Trump has made no headway in trying to carve out an agenda, and by now it’s a given that his legacy will be a cautionary tale of failure.

So it wouldn’t be at all shocking to see Donald Trump do what he’s always done whenever he’s realized he’s failed in the business world: declare bankruptcy on his presidency, so to speak, by resigning and calling the whole thing a success. Not that anyone outside his base would agree with him, but then again, he would only truly be trying to convince himself. But resigning would not make the ongoing criminal investigations into him go away.