Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was roasted on social media for creating a fictional Long Island couple called Joe and Eileen Bailey, whom he has based his entire political career on.
During an episode of Last Week Tonight, British-born HBO talk show host John Oliver shared several clips of Schumer talking about the fictional couple, describing them as being “middle-class” and having “bought into Reagan Republicanism in 1980.” Schumer has explained that he has “guided” his political career “through the Baileys.”
“They’re a middle-class couple in Massapequa, which is a suburb on Long Island,” Schumer said in one clip from an interview on Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN.
“Joe and Eileen Bailey, this middle-class couple, they bought into Reagan Republicanism in 1980,” Schumer says in another clip.
“Joe and Eileen are worried about losing their jobs or their friends jobs,” Schumer says in another clip.
“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,” Schumer says in another clip from an interview with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Live in 2012.
“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 says in another 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.”
During the episode, Oliver continues to highlight how Schumer “first introduced the world to the Baileys” in his book, Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time. Oliver notes that in the book, Schumer “mentions the Baileys, an astonishing 265 times, in 264 pages.”
Oliver explains how Schumer has given the fictional couple an “unnecessary detailed backstory,” adding that Schumer has said Joe Bailey “takes off his cap and sings along with the national anthem before the occasional Islanders game.”
Eileen Bailey is described as helping “with the clothing drive” at the couples’ church, and as having a father who “had a prostate cancer scare a few years ago.”
A Washington Post article from November 2018, notes that before the fictional couple was named the Bailey’s, Schumer called them the “O’Reillys.” A former spokesman for Schumer noted that Schumer used to ask, “What would the O’Reillys think?” before changing the last name to Bailey.
If that feels a little manufactured, well, that’s Schumer’s way, too. 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.”
In 2016, “he” voted for Trump and “she” for Clinton, Schumer said, but this election, they are both voting for Democrats.
“He was always asking, ‘What would the O’Reillys think?’” said Eric Schultz, a former spokesman for Schumer. He doesn’t ask that anymore, but that’s because in 2007, Schumer wrote about the family and decided their name needed to be a little more national. Now he’s always asking, “What would the Baileys think?”
Several people took to X to comment about how “weird” it was that Schumer had created a fictional couple to base his political career on, while others pointed out it was a “perfect example of why he sucks at his job.”
“This is quite a 7 minutes,” Fox News anchor Breit Baier wrote in a post. “About the Senate Minority Leader and his repeated use of fictional constituents.”
“Chuck Schumer doesn’t lower himself to speak to his own constituents, so he makes them up,” one person wrote.
“Whoa,” Jason Chaffetz, a Fox News contributor, wrote. “This is weird.”
“What would the Baileys think if they existed?” Maryland state Delegate Matt Morgan (R) wrote in a post.
“But do the Baileys know how to cook a cheeseburger?” one person asked, a reference to when Schumer shared a photo of himself grilling hamburgers, only for people to roast him over placing cheese on a raw burger.
“Schumer’s imaginary friends that have guided his entire political life is such a perfect example of why he sucks at his job,” another person wrote.
“Go ahead, primary him out,” host of SiriusXM’s the Wilkow Majority, Andrew Wilkow, wrote in a post.
