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‘They’ve broken up with you’: Comedian John Oliver roasts Schumer for naming fake couple 265 times
Schumer, throughout his political career, has mentioned a fictional couple named Joe and Eileen Bailey, who are meant to represent the average American voters.
Comedian John Oliver mocked US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's frequent invoking of a fictional couple, saying that his “imaginary friends” have “already broken up” with him.
Schumer, on various occasions throughout his political career, has mentioned a fictional Long Island couple named Joe and Eileen Bailey who are meant to represent the average American voters.
The Democrat, who describes the couple as Reagan-era Republicans, has also weaved intricate details of their personal lives, like their love for Kung Pao chicken, Joe's habit of singing the national anthem at the Islanders games and more.
“The Baileys have guided Chuck Schumer’s political life — which is a little weird given they don’t exist," Oliver said during his monologue on Last Week Tonight. He further showed clips of Schumer's “unnecessarily detiled” constant mentions of the couple.
“I have conversations with them… one of my staffers once said I had imaginary friends to the press, got me in some trouble,” Schumer said in one of the clips shown by Oliver.
The characters were first introduced in a book authored by Schumer titled ‘Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time’. During his monologue, Oliver said that the Baileys, who Schumer sees as middle-class voters, have been mentioned by the New York lawmaker 265 times in the book, which has 264 pages.
Speaking about the details provided by Schumer about the couple over the years, from their salaries to their economic and political beliefs, Oliver said that the Senator had provided a “J.R.R. Tolkien-level of gratuitous backstory”.
Oliver also spoke about how the Baileys had influenced Schumer's positions on several issues, including the 2008 financial crisis and cybersecurity.
However, the comedian goes on to highlight that despite Schumer's focus on the couple, the Baileys seem to have deserted him, while highlighting that the Senator himself admitted that the couple had voted for US President Donald Trump in five of the last six presidential ballots cast between them. “Politically, it seems they’ve already broken up with you,” Oliver said.
