Why can't you trim or merge (pathfinder) a gradient?

Question

Whenever I try to trim or merge a gradient it only divides it, but when it's solid it works. Why? I'm trying to trim/merge some artwork with a lot of gradients and it's making it impossible. If anyone knows of a way to do this with gradients please let me know. Here is an image of what I'm talking about showing it working with solids, but not gradients.
<a href='http://postimg.org/image/6oew6ezdr/' target='_blank'><img src='http://s11.postimg.org/6oew6ezdr/trim.jpg' border='0' alt="trim" /></a>

Answer 1

Yes I mean why can't you trim or merge a gradient object (not mesh gradient) like a solid object? Both are objects and both get split in some way without effecting the gradient itself (besides splitting the object of course). So why is it that it only allows gradient objects to basically be divided only, but not merged or trimmed.  It seems like it should work, but for some reason is treats solid objects as solid objects and gradients objects as solid objects with overprint fill applied. I really wish Adobe would address this as it doesn't make sense to clip out the gradient area if the gradient isn't required to change. What's the point of having the trim or merge if it only divides it? What's the point of leaving objects underneath the gradient? It just seems to defeat the purpose of both operations.
For anyone else following this thread the way to workaround this is by copying each gradient, pasting behind (ctrl+b) and then changing it to a solid color that is not in the design. Once you trim or merge you can select same fill color to delete the solid color from underneath and then you are just left with the gradient properly trim/merged. The bad news is this is super time intensive if you have 100s of gradients on multiple different levels as paste behind pastes only directly behind the object you had selected, so if your order is not perfect some objects will actually paste in front which you don't want.
Alternatively you could trim or merge everything and then select same fill color and then reunite each gradient, but that changes the gradient position itself so you'll have to reapply the correct angle, etc to each gradient which again is time consuming.
For all those wondering why do I need to be able to do this. I work with spot colors which have to be trapped correctly with gradients. This requires overlapping gradients and doing overprint fills to make sure they blend properly. If I trim/merge the gradient objects if puts lines through the gradient that shows up in print and makes it more difficult to apply the underlaying color correctly.