With the coverage of President Trump putting media bias on display as never before, an influential House chairman and longtime press critic has opened a campaign to call out the "mainstream media" for what he thinks it is.
"The media and Democrats are so close in association and so close in their philosophical views that we might as well use one word to describe both, and that's 'Mediacrats,'" said Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, founder of the House Media Fairness Caucus.
Smith, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, has often been on the receiving end of the media's anti-conservative bias, but he said the attacks on Trump have led him to urge colleagues to stop referring to the "mainstream" media.
"How can the media be considered 'mainstream' when it doesn't represent a majority of the American people?" he asked. "It's more accurate to use the term 'liberal,'" he said.
In an interview, he cited the media's ills: 91 percent of Trump campaign coverage was negative, 96 percent of media campaign contributions went to Democrat Hillary Clinton, and 55 percent of the public is weary of the anti-Trump tone in coverage.
"It's the most biased media I've seen in my lifetime," Smith said.
He blamed that for keeping Trump's approval ratings low. "Maybe the media is having an impact on the public's view of the president. That's not a surprise. Even if most of America thinks the media is biased, they still can be influenced by that bias, and I think that helps explain some of the public opinion polls of the president," he said.
While he has no plans to punish the media other than by scolding, he praised Trump for finding away around his press corps.
"I am a strong advocate of the president's use of Twitter. The only way the president can get around the national liberal media is to tweet," said Smith, a 15-term lawmaker and one-time Politico Policymaker of the Year.
He urged Trump, who regularly tweets his frustration with the media, to keep it up. "He can connect directly with the American people, and that's why the media doesn't like it. They want themselves to be the oracle. They themselves want to be the only conduit. They themselves want to tell the American people what to think," he said.
But that feud, he warned, could push the "mainstream media" over the cliff.
"I am concerned that it is hurting our republic, I'm afraid they are hurting themselves, I'm afraid they are hurting the country, and they're clearly so intent on hurting the president that they are taking themselves down at the same time," he concluded.
Reagan library director taps bigger subject: Cloning Jesus
John Heubusch is the classic "local boy makes good" story.
A House aide in the 1980s who later was the Labor Department's chief of staff during former President George H.W. Bush's administration, he went on to work for Gateway Computers, ran owner Ted Waitt's foundation and is now the executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute.
His next job: tackling the Second Coming.
Heubusch is the author of the just-released novel The Shroud Conspiracy, a DaVinci Code meets Indiana Jones thriller that considers the cloning of Jesus. It reads so well that a sequel has been ordered by Simon & Schuster imprint Howard Books, and Heubusch is in talks for a movie.
While he tapped his Washington roots researching the book, it is not a D.C. whodunit.
"When I tell people I've written a book and its sequel, to a person they all expect it's a Brad Meltzer-type novel given all my political experience, the Hill, the administration, lobbying. That's their expectation. But the subject matter I've chosen is far, far away from the halls of Congress," he said.
However, it does touch on a subject that is in the headlines. "One of the fundamentally important elements in the book is all about human cloning," Heubusch said. "From a research nugget standpoint, it's interesting to know that while human cloning seems to be outrageous, it's actually not outlawed in the U.S. There's no federal law prohibiting it."
Conservative leaders give Trump 'A' for keeping promises
The loose confederation of Tea Party and other conservative organizers, the most consistently active grassroots movement in decades, believes that President Trump is making good on his campaign promises despite media and congressional opposition.
In its inaugural survey of 4,081 conservative grassroots leaders, the Convention of States Project found that 67 percent gave Trump an "A" for keeping his promises to them on issues they care about, from cutting regulation to repealing Obamacare.
But the media and Congress, including Republicans, took a hit in the survey. The media got an "F" from 79 percent when "it comes to covering the new administration," and 41 percent gave Republican leaders a "C" for working with the new president.
The survey is significant because those polled are among the most engaged conservative activists in the nation but are typically ignored or undervalued in polls and the media, according to Mark Meckler, a Tea Party co-founder and head of the Convention of States Project, a group advocating for a constitutional convention to restrict federal overreach.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com