When someone suffers a severe loss, the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or job, or they receive a devastating health diagnosis, mental health experts say that they may experience the five stages of grief. The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, and Monday on CNN's The Lead, host Jake Tapper, mocked it all, by attempting to tie President Trump's post-midterm actions to those stages, while accusing him of an ambush.
Maybe this show should be called The Lecture with Jake Tapper. He began his show, noting that CNN had just previously cut away from Trump's unexpected White House press conference, which he referred to and described, in a most hostile manner.
TAPPER: Welcome to The Lead, I'm Jake Tapper. We begin with breaking news. President Trump is in the White House briefing room in a surprise press conference, kind of an ambush, taking questions from reporters. We're going to monitor what he says and bring you more if he makes any news. Last we heard, he was kind of playing the hits.
Reporters don't ambush Trump? It's somehow the other way around?
Tapper then began his stages of grief monologue.
TAPPER: President Trump reckons with the blue tsunami that nearly wiped out his Republican Party. Today, it appears Trump has entered the denial stage of grief. On Truth Social this morning, the President wrote -- quote -- "Does anybody really believe that this election was honest? How could the polls be so wrong? Some early voting "dumps" were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote. It's all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter" -- unquote.
The President is, of course, offering zero evidence of fraud. Zero, per usual.
Let's guess CNN hosts didn't say voters "nearly wiped out the Democratic Party" when the Republicans gained 63 seats in 2010. Tapper then invoked a quote from Megyn Kelly, who he did not mention has been very critical of Trump since the Iran war, to attempt to make his point.
TAPPER: We've been reporting for months that President Trump's baseless election fraud rants and his actions to take more federal control over elections could set the stage for him to question the midterm results if Republicans lost. But this time, with the scale of the losses and the obvious political warning signs leading up to it, fraud, well, that's a tough sell even to members of the MAGA world such as Megyn Kelly responding on Twitter today -- quote -- "just stop."
Then it was back to grief phases.
TAPPER: Before Trump reached the denial phase, he spent time in other stages of grief. On a 60 Minutes interview taped Friday that aired last night, the President was in what seemed like the bargaining stage, literally, surprising his own base by saying that he would be open to bargaining with Democrats on the matter of immigration reform.
After playing a clip from that interview, regrading Trump's desire for an immigration deal, and pouring cold water on that eventuality due to the promotion of Stephen Miller to Chief of Staff, it was back to more stages of grief.
TAPPER: Another stage of grief, of course, is anger, and that showed up last week when the President reportedly lashed out at his then chief of staff, Susie Wiles, over the election losses.... After that, he elevated Stephen Miller to the role.
Early on Tuesday night, we're told, as the blue wave rolled in, the President appeared to start out in this depression stage, holding up, watching T.V. He said very little.
Tapper then finished up the attempted comedy routine.
TAPPER: We will report back to you if we ever find Trump settling into the final stage of grief, acceptance.
With this stages of grief schtick, Tapper presented as a left wing talk show host, not a journalist, something Tapper would surely deny. He's just "truth telling." Some might attribute the segment to Tapper's anger or depression over the fact that despite the blue tsunami Trump is still President, something he may be in denial about. We will report back to you if we ever find Tapper settling into the final stages of grief, acceptance. This is CNN!
