Photograph by Earl Gibson III/Getty

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Republicans on Friday expressed bafflement that President Obama had garnered a record-high second-term approval rating despite having turned the United States into an economically devastated, crime-ridden hellhole.

Appearing on “Fox & Friends,” the Trump surrogate Rudolph Giuliani said he was “dumbfounded” by the disconnect between Obama’s high approval rating and the President’s near-total dismemberment of a formerly strong nation.

“This country used to be a wonderful place to live,” the former New York mayor said. “Today, all you see is a hellscape of smoldering ruins.”

Giuliani blamed the mainstream media for not properly informing the American people about the destruction and havoc Obama has wrought since his first day in office.

“We have an unemployment rate of forty per cent and a murder rate of fifty per cent,” he said. "We are losing a million jobs a day to China and hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees are swarming over our border with Mexico. Those are the facts."

He also questioned the methodology used to determine the President’s approval rating. “These pollsters are just talking to people who are still alive,” he said. “They’re not talking to all of the people who have been killed.”

Having witnessed their President transform a once-great country into a dystopian nightmare unfit for human habitation, the American people’s decision to give Obama a record-high approval rating filled Giuliani with bewilderment. “Maybe they approve of the job he did founding ISIS,” he said.