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Right-wing media to President Obama: We are so very sorry.

Thats the message I got last week from the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page.

The Journal abandoned efforts to make sense of President Trumps outright fiction that Obama wiretapped him. Its editorial page never a friend to Obama wrote this last week about Trump:

[He] clings to his assertion like a drunk to an empty gin bottle, rolling out his press spokesman to make more dubious claims.

They are not yet saying Thanks, Obama, but their words do stir new appreciation for the good old days under the previous president.

Will right-wing talk radio follow the Journals example?

Imagine the reaction from far-right talk radio the people who raised hell and their ratings by attacking Obama daily with accusations about fake scandals if the 44thpresident had lied about his predecessor or if people in his circle had been taking money from Russia.

Imagine the outburst from Rush Limbaugh the king of conservative talk radio if the Justice Department told Obama that his National Security Advisor had lied about discussing sanctions with Russian government officials and Obama had waited three weeks to demand that persons resignation.

And what would Hugh Hewitt say on radio if it was later revealed that the advisor took over $65,000 from companies linked to Vladimir Putins Russia, in addition to pocketing more than $500,000 from moonlighting as a lobbyist tied to the Turkish government?

What might my friend, conservative radio host Lars Larson, have said if Obamas former campaign manager had taken $10 million from Russian oligarchs to in his words greatly benefit the interests of Putins Russia inside the U.S.?

Of course, the reality is Obamas team never engaged in such damaging acts. It is Trumps team that is under investigation for all of these charges of scandalous behavior.

Radio talk show hosts on the right have great ratings but they are not elected to defend the democratic basis of our government. That job belongs to Congress.

But House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), has become an apologist for Trump. Last week, he rushed over to the White House to say he had seen transcripts of apparently legal intercepts that may have swept up some Trump campaign officials.

Was this evidence that Obama wiretapped Trump as he was running for president? No. Even Nunes admits that. But by briefing the White House before sharing the information with his own committee, Nunes revealed himself as an advocate for the Trump White House.

Nunes, who served on the Trump transition team, compromised any claim to independence and threw away the credibility he needs.

Before Nunes rash action it was left to the top Democrat on the House Intelligence panel, Rep. Adam SchiffAdam SchiffAmericans have a right to know what intel community knows on Russia Juan Williams: If Obama had acted like Trump... Week ahead: House Intel chair under fire over Trump surveillance claims MORE (D-Calif.), to explain to the nation what the House panel had already found:

Last summer, at the height of a bitterly contested and hugely consequential presidential campaign, [Russia]intervened in an effort to weaken our democracy, and to influence the outcome for one candidate and against the other, Schiff said.

Schiff made more news later in the week when he told Chuck Todd of NBC News, there is more than circumstantial evidencethat there was collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign.

Meanwhile, House Republicans continue injuring the partys brand as they busily sweep dirt from the Russia scandal under the White House carpet.

But even the attempted congressional cover-up cant fool the public not even in concert with the silence from right-wing talk radio hosts. Look at the polling: Trumps approval ratings are at historic lows for any president in the modern age at this point in his presidency.

A Quinnipiac poll last week found his approval rating had fallen to 37 percent while his disapproval rating had risen to 56 percent. According to the same poll, 60 percent of voters say he is not honest, 55 percent say he does not have good leadership skills and 57 percent say he does not care about average Americans.

What could be driving the presidents collapsing poll numbers?

The Quinnipiac results suggest an answer.

A whopping 70 percent of voters do not believe Trumps claim that Obama wiretapped him last year. Just 19 percent believe in the face of the evidence that Obama did so.

In perhaps the most damning result in the Quinnipiac survey, 73 percent of voters say Trumps administration makes statements without evidence to support them very often or somewhat often.

Again, it was left to the Wall Street Journal editorial page to admit that the Trump White House is drowning in a vast credibility crisis.

If PresidentTrumpannounces that North Korea launched a missile that landed within 100 miles of Hawaii, would most Americans believe him? The Journal wrote. Would the rest of the world? Were not sure, which speaks to the damage that Mr. Trump is doing to his Presidency with his seemingly endless stream of exaggerations, evidence-free accusations, implausible denials and other falsehoods.

President Obama, please accept the right wings many apologies.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Juan Williams: If Obama had acted like Trump... - The Hill

This post has been updated.

The Washington Post's Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker broke some news Sunday night: President Trump is launching top adviser Jared Kushner on a campaign to create a more efficient, business-like11 federal government.

And the White House has an illustrative metaphor for it: a SWAT team. Here's the crux:

The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements.

If you think you've heard this idea before, it's because you have.

Back in 2008, candidate Barack Obama plotted a pretty similar effort complete with the SWAT metaphor and all. Here's how the campaign described it:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden will create a focused team within the White House that will work with agency leaders and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to improve results and outcomes for federal government programs while eliminating waste and inefficiency. This unit, a SWAT team, will be composed of top-performing and highly-trained government professionals and be headed by a new Chief Performance Officer (CPO) who will report directly to the president. The CPO will work with federal agencies to set tough performance targets and hold managers responsible for progress. The president will meet regularly with cabinet officers to review the progress their agencies are making toward meeting performance improvement targets.

There are some differences, of course. The Obama effort seemed more narrowly tailored, while Trump's is focused on potentially privatizing government functions. But the overall goal is the same: a more businesslike, accountable federal government. And for that, they apparently both needed the SWAT team.

President Trump met with retail executives, Feb. 15, at the White House. (The Washington Post)

Business executive Jeffrey D. Zients, who would later head up the Office of Management and Budget and Obama's National Economic Council, was chosen to be this chief performance officer the Kushner role, essentially and confirmed in June 2009. And PolitiFact notes that hisoffice was pretty busy.

Oh, and then there was Hillary Clinton's education SWAT team, which she discussed in a March 2016 debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders as a way to deal with another form of struggling and inefficient government bureaucracy: schools.

Number three, I want to set-up inside the Department of Education, for want of a better term, kind of an education SWATteam, if you will, she said. Where we've got qualified people, teachers, principals, maybe folks who are retired, maybe folks who are active, but all of whom are willing to come and help.

And there was President George W. Bush's financial crimes SWAT team to root out white-collar crime in 2002. And there was President George H.W. Bush's SWAT team for collecting billions in unpaid government debts identified by OMB.

It was even identified as such in official White House documents, perAndrew Rudalevige, a contributor Bowdoin College professor and contribute to The Post's Monkey Cage blog:

Back in 1993, when he was President Bill Clinton's nominee to lead OMB, then-Rep. Leon Panetta explained why he wasn't a fan of such a SWAT team approach:

I think we all recognize that the SWAT team approach is a symptom of management problems, not a way in itself to ensure good management. While SWAT teams may be necessary in the future, our goal should be to establish better management procedures which make it possible to discover problems early and to provide for comprehensive remedies. ...If confirmed, I would take a careful look at these alternative approaches, but I would not hesitate to use SWAT teams in extreme cases.

The tradition continues.

Read more:
Trump's government efficiency 'SWAT team' sounds like Obama's government efficiency 'SWAT team' - Washington Post

New York Times

GOP, Once Unified Against Obama, Struggles for Consensus Under Trump New York Times For eight years, those divisions were often masked by Republicans' shared antipathy toward President Barack Obama. Now, as the party struggles to adjust to the post-Obama political order, it is facing a nagging question: How do you hold together when ... GOP in charge after 8 years of Obama, struggles to govern early in Trump eraMLive.com National (US) Poll - March 23, 2017 - U.S. Voters Oppose GOP Health | Quinnipiac University ConnecticutQuinnipiac University Poll all 5,248 news articles »

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GOP, Once Unified Against Obama, Struggles for Consensus Under Trump - New York Times

After retiring, someformer presidents dedicate their time to apolitical, benevolent causes, such asGeorge W. Bush's returnto Texas totake up painting.Then there is former President Barack Obama, who is focusing his retirement on redrawing the battle lines of American democracy.

The 44th Commander in Chiefis honing in on redistricting reform: redrawing political districtlines so that they are more representative of the people who live there.

"Democrats have to be clear on the given population distribution across the country," Obama said in his first post-election news conference, "We have to show up everywhere. We have to work at a grass-roots level, something that's been a running thread in my career."

To help do this, before leaving office Obama created the National Democratic Redistricting Committeeand namedformer U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder as its chairman.Earlier Saturday Kelly Ward, former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,was picked to lead the group as an interim Executive Director.

According to the NDRC website, Republican gerrymanderingafter the 2010 census put Democrats at a disadvantage.Holdersays on the site that "The biggest rigged system in America is gerrymandering."

To redraw the maps, the NDRC will focus on winning elections that impact redistricting, winning legal battles in state and federal courtand sponsoring ballot initiatives.

"American voters deserve fair maps that represent their diverse communitiesand we need a coordinated stragey to make that happen." Holder told Politico, adding"This unprecedented new effort will ensure Democrats have a seat at the table to create fairer maps after 2020."

As ATTN: reported last month, districts drawn by Republicans in Texas have already been found guilty of gerrymandering, and four of the nine House seats that Democrats picked up in 2016 were from distracts that were redistricted, according to Politico.

Up first: Thegovernor's race in Virginia, where Holder rallied support this week to hold on to the governor's seaton the 2017 ballot.

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Obama's Retirement Is Totally Different From Every Other President - ATTN (blog)

With the stroke of his pen, Trump will stop government contractors from having to report labor law violations, scale back federal control on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and void rules that looked to set federal standards for teacher training.

Trump campaigned on ending government regulations and signed an executive order in January that looked to scale back government rules by requiring agencies to slash two regulations for every one new rule.

"This isn't a knock on President Obama," Trump said in January when he signed the executive order. "This is a knock on many presidents preceding me. It's a knock on everybody."

This legislation, HJ Resolution 37, voids an executive order Obama signed in August that looked to protect government contractors by requiring employers to disclose labor law violations, including wage theft, unsafe working conditions and hiring discrimination.

The rollback was sponsored by Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican who argued the rule had the potential to blacklist some government contractors.

Foxx said that the rule allowed the Labor Department to deny business to contractors based on "alleged" violations.

"Under this rule, bureaucrats can determine employers are guilty until proven innocent and then deny them the ability to do business with the federal government," Foxx said.

The White House said in a February statement that Trump intended to sign the bill.

"The administration strongly supports the actions taken by the House to begin to nullify unnecessary regulations imposed on America's businesses," read the statement of administration policy.

This bill, HJ Resolution 44, sponsored by Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, looks to halt an Obama administration plan for the millions of aces managed by the Bureau of Land Management, especially those concentrated in the Western United States.

The plan was drawn up, the bureau said in December, in an attempt to use more data when deciding whether to allow logging, mining and other commercial uses on federal land. It also looked to reduce the amount of time required to decide what to do with federal lands.

"Under the current system, it takes an average of eight years for the BLM to finish a land use plan," Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze said in December. "This update to our planning rule allows for a more streamlined process that also increases collaboration and transparency."

Critics of the rule -- known at "Planning 2.0" -- said the rules would minimize local input in land management and stymie public comment, while giving the federal government more authority on what to do with the space.

"Planning 2.0 dilutes local and state voices and centralizes power here in Washington, DC," Rep. Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican, said in a speech about the plan.

The White House signaled in February that it intended to approve the bill to void the Obama-era rule.

"Given its regional approach to planning, the administration believes the rule does not adequately serve the State and local communities' interests and could potentially dilute their input in planning decisions," the statement said.

These bills, HJ Resolutions 57 and 58, nullify education rules outlined by the Obama administration near the end of 2016 that Republicans argued took control out of the hands of states and localities while also burdening states with requirements on data collection and teacher training.

"While school accountability is important, the administration is committed to local control of education and this rule places additional burden on states and constrains them in areas where the ESSA intended broad flexibility," the White House said in their statement.

The Obama administration said at the time that both the rules would push the United States education system past former President George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education reform bill.

Trump signaled during the 2016 campaign that he wanted states to have more control in how they structure their education system and the two laws look to do just that.

"The purpose of the resolution under consideration is simple: Reining in the federal role in education and protecting the state and local control promised to students, parents, and education leaders," Rep. Brett Guthrie, a Texas Republican, said about the bill he sponsored to roll back the rule.

CNN's Allie Malloy contributed to this report.

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Trump tries to make good on promises to roll back Obama-era regulations - CNN