Yesterday, the Federal Reserve confirmed that its chairman, Jerome Powell, had earlier this year been duped into a conversation about the economy by a Russian comedic duo pretending to be Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The fake interview, which a Fed spokesman gamely tried to dismiss as “a friendly conversation,” ended up being broadcast on Russian TV. And from there, as the BBC reports, “Video now circulating on the internet shows Mr. Powell describing a sharp slowdown in growth in the U.S., following the bank’s efforts to rein in price rises.”

Anytime a Fed chairman so much as sneezes, markets move, domestic and international economies recalibrate themselves, and huge sums of money are won and lost. So the news of Powell’s gullibility, and his grimly pessimistic outlook, couldn’t have come at a worse time for Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats.

After all, our octogenarian president just announced he wants to “finish the job.”

If “the job” is bringing the United States to its knees, he’s well on his way. “Biden’s record,” as Ben Shapiro notes, “is one of the worst for any first-term president. His ‘Finish the Job’ slogan sounds more like a threat by a movie villain than a guarantee of future prosperity. Joe Biden has nothing to run on. Nothing except former President Donald Trump.”

Begging Ben’s pardon, but running against Trump’s economic record would be idiotic, even suicidal — at least if Scranton Joe and his handlers are even remotely honest about it. Democrat voters certainly tend to be of the low-information variety, but not even these eyes-closed, hands-over-the-ears hordes can deny the difference between the roaring Trump economy and the whimpering Biden one. They can feel it in their bones, just as the rest of us can. As economic analyst and former Trump adviser Larry Kudlow has pointed out, “In January of 2021, we left Joe Biden a 6.5% economic growth rate and a 1.4% inflation rate.”

Anyone care to guess what those two measurables are today? The annual inflation rate is 5%, more than three times what it was when Trump left office. And, as our Nate Jackson pointed out recently, all the Democrats and their Leftmedia lickspittles can do is lie about it.

As for economic, ahem, growth, that too is going the wrong way. As Biden’s own Bureau of Economic Analysis reported yesterday, “Real gross domestic product increased at an annual rate of 1.1 percent in the first quarter of 2023, according to the ‘advance’ estimate.”

The Wall Street Journal digs into what’s behind those bleak GDP numbers: “Democrats say the Inflation Reduction Act will stimulate a new investment bonanza. But that will only be for a narrow cohort of favored green businesses. Everyone else will pay higher taxes and much higher energy prices while facing tighter regulation on environmental and many other grounds — on top of higher interest rates. The wonder is that business investment hasn’t fallen further.”

Gallup’s recent polling shows the president’s terrible timing: “As Joe Biden begins his reelection campaign, his job approval rating among the U.S. public has slipped to 37%, the lowest Gallup has measured for him to date. Biden’s job approval has been in the low 40% range for most of the past 19 months, apart from the current reading and a 38% score last July. … The drop in Biden’s job approval corresponds with Americans’ worsening evaluations of the U.S. economy. Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index for April is -44, down from -38 in March.”

Lest you think Gallup has it out for Biden, the normally friendly pollsters at Fox News have equally bad tidings: “Most voters think the economy is in bad shape, a record number feel it’s getting worse for their family, and not many think the White House is helping. … Economic views are negative by more than three-to-one: 21% say it is in excellent/good shape, while 78% rate it as only fair/poor.”

How far has Joe Biden fallen? It seems like ages ago when President Unity stood before the American people and boldly read this off the teleprompter:

On this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation. History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity. We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.

Ever since, it’s been just that — bitterness and fury, with a steady diet of awful leftist policies and one sophomoric “Ultra MAGA” denunciation after another.

When Joe Biden took to the stage on Inauguration Day, his approval rating was at 57%. Today, he’s at 37%.

Good luck with that.