Chuck Schumer caught red-handed in a lie that could have his career on the ropes

chuck schumer

Schumer has worn out his welcome in Congress. But his time there might be coming to an end.

As Chuck Schumer was caught red-handed in a lie that could have his career on the ropes.

In a peculiar twist of political strategy, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has found himself at the center of social media chatter for anchoring his decades-long career on a fictional Long Island couple, Joe and Eileen Bailey. The Senate Minority Leader’s imaginative approach was thrust into the spotlight during a recent Last Week Tonight episode, where host John Oliver showcased Schumer’s habit of invoking this made-up duo as his political compass.

Oliver presented a series of clips capturing Schumer’s vivid descriptions of the Baileys. “They’re a middle-class couple in Massapequa, which is a suburb on Long Island,” Schumer shared in an interview on Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN.

In another, he noted, “Joe and Eileen Bailey, this middle-class couple, they bought into Reagan Republicanism in 1980.” Their worries, he claimed in another clip, include “losing their jobs or their friends’ jobs.”

Schumer even detailed their policy preferences: “The Baileys really don’t believe in trickle down, they don’t believe in a whole lot of government spending, but they believe in tax breaks for kids to go to college,” he told the Wall Street Journal Live in 2012.

The Baileys are more than a passing reference for Schumer. In his book, Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time, he mentions them an astonishing 265 times across 264 pages, per Oliver.

The Last Week Tonight host highlighted Schumer’s penchant for crafting an “unnecessary detailed backstory,” noting that Joe “takes off his cap and sings along with the national anthem before the occasional Islanders game,” while Eileen helps “with the clothing drive” at their church and has a father who “had a prostate cancer scare a few years ago.”

Interestingly, the Baileys weren’t always known by that name. A 2018 Washington Post article revealed that Schumer referred to them as “the O’Reillys.”

Former spokesman Eric Schultz explained that Schumer used to ask, “What would the O’Reillys think?” before rebranding them as the Baileys in 2007 for a “more national” appeal. “If that feels a little manufactured, well, that’s Schumer’s way, too,” the article stated.

“He’s gone so far as to create an imaginary family out of thin air and to constantly seek their counsel. He used to refer to them as ‘the O’Reillys,’ a middle-class family that doesn’t really follow politics that closely but spends a lot of time discussing things at the kitchen table. ‘I know them,’ Schumer said. ‘I grew up around families like them.’”

Schumer has even imagined the Baileys’ voting patterns, claiming in 2016 that “he” voted for Trump while “she” backed Clinton, though he later said both would support Democrats in a later election. “He’s an insurance adjuster, and lives in the New York suburbs. By New York standards, he makes $50,000 a year, if he lived in the middle of the country he’d make 40,” Schumer stated in an interview.

“Wife works in a medical office, she makes about 20, she might make 15 elsewhere. And, you know, I have guided my political life through the Bailey’s.”

The discovery of Schumer’s fictional touchstone ignited a firestorm on X, where reactions ranged from amused to scathing. “This is quite a 7 minutes,” Fox News anchor Bret Baier posted, pointing to Schumer’s “repeated use of fictional constituents.”

Others were less kind. “Chuck Schumer doesn’t lower himself to speak to his own constituents, so he makes them up,” one user remarked. Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz simply called it “weird.”

Maryland state Delegate Matt Morgan (R) took a sarcastic jab: “What would the Baileys think if they existed?” Another user referenced a past Schumer misstep, asking, “But do the Baileys know how to cook a cheeseburger?”—a nod to when Schumer was ridiculed for placing cheese on a raw burger in a grilling photo.

“Schumer’s imaginary friends that have guided his entire political life is such a perfect example of why he sucks at his job,” one critic wrote, while SiriusXM host Andrew Wilkow urged, “Go ahead, primary him out.”

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