Happy Sunday, and welcome back to Dry Powder.

With nearly four indictments hanging over Trump’s head, would 45 accept a radical deal from his political rival? In tonight’s issue, a close look at a wily hypothetical from one of the most prominent figures on Wall Street.

Then along comes David Rubenstein, the billionaire co-founder of The Carlyle Group, one of the O.G. firms for what we now call alternative asset management and what we used to call private equity, who recently said the quiet part out loud. In a public conversation the other day in Nantucket with the journalist Evan Thomas, Rubenstein did what billionaires like to do: he proposed a big, important, creative deal. This time, though, he was proposing a political deal, not a business deal. It is pretty damn clever, I have to say, and one I can certainly endorse, too, even if it may never happen.

He urged President Biden to call former president Donald Trump and offer to pardon him for his alleged federal crimes, and to work with state prosecutors to try to get them to pardon Trump for his supposed state crimes. In exchange for these extraordinary get-out-of-jail-free cards, Rubenstein continued, Trump would agree to never run for any public office again, including for president in 2024. The deal also had one final bipartisan twist of brinkmanship: If Trump were to agree to Biden’s stipulations, Biden would also further announce that he would not run for re-election in 2024, either.

If Trump retakes the White House, it seems unlikely that our fragile democracy could withstand another four years of his lies, irrational behavior, and vendettas. For his part, Joe Biden has done well to try to purge the worst parts of Trumpism—the berating of our allies and excusing our enemies for their atrocious behavior; the blatant cronyism; the endless conspiracy theories—during his tenure as president. But many Americans are not giving him the credit he deserves because, for whatever reasons, they no longer believe he is up to the task of leading the country for another four years. He’s too old, seems to be the consensus in the nation these days.

In other words, Biden’s greatest service to the country, alongside his superior legislative record, would be to make the selfless decision to vacate the White House while he’s ahead, not only clearing the field for both political parties but also putting behind us the national political nightmare that is Donald Trump. Rubenstein’s fellow Wall Street billionaire and onetime Trump supporter, Steve Schwarzman, seems to agree with Rubenstein. “It’s time for a new generation of people to take that slot,” he said on CNBC on Friday. Schwarzman went on to further explain his logic. “[It’s] not the easiest job in the world,” he said. “The demands on people in that position are frankly unbelievable. And I think you need a certain amount of resiliency. And when you’re approaching your 80s, I’m not sure that’s the exact kind of position to be in, to have those demands made on you.”

Rubenstein and Schwarzman are right. We are in desperate need as a nation for a new generation of political leaders. Make no mistake, I would love nothing more than to see Trump prosecuted for his alleged crimes, for which he is already facing three indictments and is likely to get hit with one more. He is a man who has gotten away with crime after crime pretty much his entire life. It’s time he faced some serious accountability for all of it, instead of slithering away once again from his proper comeuppance. But, as important as it is for Trump to face the justice he has more than earned and deserves—for fomenting the January 6 insurrection, for swiping classified national security documents, for trying to steal the 2020 election—it is more important that the nation, and its fragile democracy, find a way to put the whole sorry Trump chapter behind us. If the sacrifice we collectively must make for him to go away is that he is pardoned for his crimes, then so be it. Like Rubenstein, that is a deal I am willing to make, so that the name Donald Trump disappears from our collective consciousness and fades into the history books.

And the sooner a new generation of political leaders steps to the forefront, the better. If Joe Biden is the one who must abdicate his office to clear the playing field on both sides of the political spectrum, I can live with that. My bet is that such a move would make Biden wildly revered throughout the land, and would put him, metaphorically at least, on Mount Rushmore. Besides, he’ll be 82 years old come Inauguration Day 2025. Although he’s been a far more successful president than anyone would have anticipated, he’s looking increasingly frail and uncomfortable in the White House, even if he’s more robust than he appears to be on television. My guess is that he’d be both pleased and relieved to know that he can return to his beloved Delaware, as an ex-president, and spend his summers on Rehoboth Beach, and not just for a single day.

The Democratic side of the political ledger is a little more difficult to discern, as the incumbent has crowded out challengers from entering the ring, save for the clueless and egomaniacal Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the longer-than-longshot Cornel West. But there are more than a few Democratic candidates that could prove formidable opponents to whomever the Republicans choose. Among them are people like Chris Murphy, the senator from Connecticut; Gavin Newsom, the governor of California; Maura Healey, the governor of Massachusetts; and Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota. Josh Shapiro anyone? There are plenty of others too. My Puck partner Tara Palmeri recently reported that governors Newsom and J.B. Pritzker are eager and ready to fill any political void. Bring them all on.

Of course, even if Biden were to propose such a deal—a big if—it’s possible that Trump would never agree to it. Or that he would take it, painting himself as a persecuted Jesus-like political martyr, only to later renege. Or that it would make Biden look weak for even suggesting it, and then Trump would try to make more political hay out of Biden’s perceived weakness. The chaos king loves nothing more than chaos, after all. And nothing would guarantee a more chaotic election season than Trump claiming to his flock that he’s once again the victim of a Deep State plot to keep him out of the White House.

In a subsequent conversation, also in Nantucket, I asked Mike Barnicle, the journalist and Morning Joe impresario, what he thought of Rubenstein’s suggestion. Barnicle has been close with Biden for decades. It’s safe to say that he wasn’t exactly jumping out of his seat at the prospect of Biden making that offer to Trump. Like many Americans, he wants to see Trump go through a televised federal trial, get convicted on the four counts contained in the latest indictment, and be held publicly accountable for his crimes before any talk of pardoning the former president surfaces. He said he thinks Trump is running scared, even if he pretends he’s not worried by greeting wedding guests at his Bedminster Golf Club. Barnicle said he looks forward to seeing Trump stand trial in front of a jury. “I want to hear the words ‘Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” he said.

But my bet is that if Biden offered Trump a way out of his soon-to-be four indictments, and a path to freedom for the remaining years of his life, he would grab the deal and run. Even Donald Trump knows the difference between Mar-a-Lago and a prison cell.