The 5 stages of MAGA grief —and why Trump's latest smells like 'bargaining'

In her 1969 book "On Death and Dying," Swiss psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross famously detailed the "five stages of grief." Journalist David Rothkopf, in a Daily Beast opinion column, applies Kübler-Ross' concept to Donald Trump's second presidency — arguing that politically, the "desperate" Trump is going through those stages.

"The groundbreaking psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in her landmark book 'On Death and Dying,' refers to five stages patients go through as they come face to face with mortality: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance," Rothkopf explains in the Daily Beast. "We're roughly at bargaining now. Natalie Harp handles the denial, while Walt Nauta and his handlers are in charge of the isolation — even if it means squirreling him away on secret aircraft. Nobody handles the anger, but there it is in the form of tantrums on Marine One and in the Oval Office. And the bargaining, well, that's the offer of the $5000 bribe he made yesterday."

The "bribe" that Rothkopf is referring to is Trump, at the unprecedented Republican Midterms Convention in Dallas, promising payments of $5000 to Americans if the GOP holds both branches of Congress on Tuesday, November 3.

"Before this campaign season is over," the Daily Beast columnist predicts, "there will be more. And then, for Trump, will come depression. Will he ever get to acceptance, or will he circle back to more anger, lashing out like Jimmy Cagney on his way to the chair in 'Angels with Dirty Faces' — or like Bruno Ganz in the bunker in 'Downfall?' We shall see. And we know, based on Trump's history and his performance in Dallas, that it won't be pretty."

During Trump's speech at the Dallas event, Rothkopf argues, his "desperation was so palpable … that he resembled nothing so much as a gangster in a 1930s movie being dragged by his armpits to the electric chair while pleading for his life."

"What was supposed to be a celebration of Trump turned into a pathetic public freakout," Rothkopf writes. "Naturally, while the perspiration and the agitation were apparent, Trump's pleas took the form we're most accustomed to hearing from him: fraudulent promises wrapped in lies inside a welter of threats and lunatic non-sequiturs. The most notable of those fraudulent promises was also the most desperate: Trump 'offered' to pay American voters $5000 each if they returned Republicans to the majority in Congress in November. Never mind that it was an overt bribe and therefore patently illegal. Never mind that it was an old con that he has tried before and that has never materialized — are you currently living in the lap of luxury thanks to your 'DOGE dividend?'"

The Daily Beast journalist adds, "Never mind that such a scheme would cost over $1 trillion dollars and add to our already incomprehensibly large debt."

According to Rothkopf, "con artist" Trump's $5000 "bribe" is "no different from" the "promises" he made with his Atlantic City casinos.

"But he also knows that his time is running out," Rothkopf writes. "That his lies are landing flat. That he is not going to be able to talk his way out of this final reckoning. Which is why he appears so shaky and frantic."