Schumer Roasted for Inventing Fake Long Island Couple He Based Entire Career On

 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.”