WASHINGTON – The formula for a de facto coup against President Trump is pretty simple and it's happening before our very eyes, according to one of the nation's top scholars and most esteemed political analysts.

And evidence for that theory is backed up by equally renowned political observers.

This is how it works, according to classics scholar, Stanford fellow and National Review columnist Victor Davis Hanson:

The mainstream media pumps out anti-Trump stories to undermine the president.

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That creates doubt and uncertainty among lawmakers, especially those from "purple" states (those that are not overwhelmingly Republican or Democratic.)

Removing the support of the "purple" GOP lawmakers gives Democrats a de facto majority to stop the Trump agenda, even though Republicans have majorities in both the House and the Senate.

Speaking with Tucker Carlson on Fox News on Thursday, Hanson described how it began with the creation of a narrative of a failing presidency.

"What were seeing here, I don't want to be too dramatic, it's sort of, historically, a slow-motion coup where you have a nexus of celebrities, academics, the Democratic and progressive parties, and then you have the media, and they feel they can delegitimize a president with a thousand nicks, none of them significant in themselves, but they coalesced to build a narrative that Trump is inexperienced, that he is uncouth, that he's crude, that is reckless," explained the scholar.

Those small wounds take a collective toll, paralyzing the administration and the government by disabling the Republican majority.

"Each day, the point is to drive his popularity down one half a point, one point, until he can't function in Congress because purple state congressional representatives don't want to take the risk to further his initiatives."

Hanson described how the mainstream media doesn't need to find any actual or provable wrongdoing by the administration to keep the Democrats' anti-Trump agenda in the headlines and hobble the president.

"I mean we've had a whole cadre of Washington and New York reporters that have done nothing other than, for six months, using all of their tools at their disposal, their genius, their experience to prove that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians, and they can't find anything. They haven't spent commensurate time to look at who was unmasking individuals. That may come out from the House Intelligence committee."

Even the Washington Post's most accomplished and famous reporter, Bob Woodard, has warned the media about losing their objectivity by "binge drinking the anti-Trump Kool-Aid," and advised them to "Stick to the reporting."

Speaking on MSNBC Friday, Woodward observed, "One of the realities we have here is we have a good, old newspaper war going, the New York Times and the Washington Post and some very powerful stories."

"At the same time, I think it's time to dial back a little bit because there are people around ... who are kind of binge drinking the anti-Trump Kool-Aid. And that is not going to work in journalism. Let the politicians have that binge drinking."

Perhaps Woodward has been sobered recently by the sensational anti-Trump stories coming from his own newspaper that have turned out to be not true.

On May 10, the Post reported that FBI Director James Comey had requested more resources for the Russia investigation shortly before he was fired by the president.

The very next day, interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe contradicted that, saying, “I’m not aware of that request, and it’s not consistent with my understanding of how we request additional resources.” He added, “I strongly believe the Russia investigation is adequately resourced.”

Also on May 10, the Post reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to resign after the White House said his memo prompted Trump to fire Comey.

The very next day, Rosenstein said that simply was not true.

Critics have cited a profit motive for newspapers to publish what could be considered fake news.

An article on the Post in Lifezette on Wednesday asserted, "Bashing Trump is good business, and the newsroom has gotten the message."

The article discussed the reaction in the Post newsroom to a story that claimed Trump had improperly divulged classified information during a meeting, on May 10, with the Russian ambassador. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster forcefully called that story "false."

False or not, the story was profitable.

Lifezette reported, "At the Washington Post, the newsroom broke into applause as the story surpassed the Post's own record for most readers-per-minute originally set by the 'Hollywood Access' story, according to Glenn Kessler, the Post's 'fact checker' columnist."

Among luminaries on the left, it's not just Woodward who is worried about the current state of reporting at such venerated news outfits as the Post.

"I am appalled at the behavior of the media," lamented the influential feminist philosopher Camille Paglia on Tuesday. "It's the collapse of journalism."

"I'm looking forward to voting Democrat again," she remarked. But she predicted Trump would be re-elected because, "I feel that the media has so utterly lost its credibility that I think people are going to vote against the media again."

Echoing Hanson's observations, Paglia charged, "Democrats are doing this in collusion with the media obviously, because they just want to create chaos."

"They want to completely obliterate any sense that the Trump administration is making any progress on anything."

And why would they want to do that?

Rush Limbaugh had an answer for why the media seem to have become so desperate to stop Trump they would resort to tactics that would discredit their reporting even in the eyes of such as Woodward and Paglia.

On May 11, the top radio talk-show host painted stopping Trump as the defining life-or-death issue for the left.

"They cannot allow for the world to see that something like this (the Trump agenda) could make the country better," Limbaugh explained.

"They cannot permit that to happen. They cannot permit Trump to improve the economy. They cannot permit Trump to make the nation more secure. They cannot permit Trump to win in international conflicts. They cannot permit it! It must not happen."

He concluded, "Every victory Trump has is just another sign of how useless and phony the establishment is."

How does Trump fight back against the coup?

He may have just decided not to play their game.

On Friday, the Washington Examiner reported the president's enraged reaction to a New York Times story that he was about to shake up his staff and fire Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

"F--- the New York Times," Trump reportedly said.

"They're not our friends. We're never going to win them over."