In a move hailed as either political satire or a cry for therapeutic intervention, progressive firebrand Lisa McCormick announced a groundbreaking "Conversation on Real America" between Senator Cory Booker's imaginary friend T-Bone, an elusive street philosopher, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's equally ethereal bellwether couple, Joe and Eileen Bailey.

John Oliver skewered Schumer on the August 10, 2025, episode of Last Week Tonight for his decades-long fixation on an imaginary Long Island couple – Joe and Eileen Bailey – questioning why the Democratic leader has allowed non-existent voters to justify his political instincts.

“Schumer first introduced the world to the Baileys in his 2007 book, Positively American, winning back the middle-class majority, one family at a time,” said the British-American comedian who hosts Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. “In it, he mentions the Baileys, an astonishing 265 times in 264 pages. He’s apparently been talking about them for years before the book was published.”

Eliana Johnson revealed that while he was mayor in Newark, Booker invented a street character for dramatic effect in a report published after he launched a campaign for a special election to fill the seat of late U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg. 

Booker has never publicly admitted that T-Bone does not exist, but the search for the truth has demonstrated that he also made false claims about holding Wazn Miller in his arms as the teenager died of a gunshot wound in 2004, and turned his ineptitude at City Hall into a superhero image by delivering diapers to a snowbound mother who could not traverse streets that were not plowed after a heavy blizzard. 

McCormick explained that the virtual summit would aim to bridge the gap between Democratic establishment lore and the gritty narratives of urban legend.

McCormick, known for her primary challenges against corrupt and ineffectual New Jersey Democrats, stated her goal was "to finally have an honest dialogue with the voices shaping Democratic Party policy – even if they only exist in delusional fantasies, archetypal truth and decades-old stump speeches."

T-Bone (Cory Booker's Imaginary Confidante) has been described as "a Newark-based spectral figure known for oscillating between lethal threats and dashboard-sobbing vulnerability, whose heart-wrenching composite backstory involves grandmothers and systemic neglect, who suddenly vanished before Booker was compelled to confirm that he lied.

Booker was raised in tony Bergen County, New Jersey, by parents who were both IBM executives. He attended Stanford University, Oxford, and Yale Law before moving to Newark in 1995 and winning a city council seat there a year later.  Lacking any real affinity for the people of Newark, but loaded with conservative cash and a long list of Silicon Valley connections, Booker invented T-Bone, a character who would bestow upon him some imitation credibility.

"It’s probably a topic 'Spartacus' Booker would rather avoid. After all, who needs prying questions about a special friend, who may or may not have been a common street criminal, a drug dealer, or, worst of all, never existed," wrote attorney and author Pete Byer.

"Cory Booker has long cultivated a carefully staged persona of the tireless, selfless urban superhero—running into burning buildings, shoveling snow for neighbors, tweeting inspirational platitudes in the dead of night—but behind the theatrics lies a politician who lies," said McCormick.

His actual record often fails to match the legend. His image is the product of savvy media manipulation, not unvarnished reality, built on highly publicized acts of individual heroism that distract from a career marked by coziness with Wall Street donors, questionable development deals in Newark, and a tendency to chase headlines over hard governance," said McCormick. "While his good looks, charm, and soaring rhetoric are undeniably attractive to some voters, the myth of Booker as a singular moral champion too often shields him from accountability for the compromises, contradictions, and calculated self-promotion that define his political life.

"Joe and Eileen Bailey, the Massapequa phantoms Schumer has invoked to justify policy shifts since 2007, are essentially made-up versions of Republican voters who supported Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump," said McCormick. "It is easy to understand that many citizens are profoundly disappointed in the spineless senator because Schumer has been trying to appeal to Republicans who despise everything Democrats support."

"This is meta-performance art criticizing meta-governance," said McCormick, who justified weaponizing the fictional friends to highlight how Senator Cory Booker and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer invented these characters to steer real policy. "It’s like a Russian nesting doll of political absurdity."

McCormick suggested that if things go well, she might host a follow-up panel featuring George Santos's non-existent donors, Hillary Clinton's Bosnian snipers, and just about anything Donald Trump ever said.

McCormick claims that in the hallowed halls of American political storytelling, it is important to know the difference between a constituent and a caricature, because real people are suffering from real problems that can be fixed, but not with fantasy.

Since Booker got to the Senate:
• Women lost abortion rights
• The Voting Rights Act was gutted
• Mass shootings have TRIPLED
• Climate disaster CO2 at 427 ppm
• New Jersey’s middle class shrank 3%
• $37 trillion was stolen from workers
• Booker missed 413 votes (9.7%)

"History won’t recall Booker’s soundbites. It will remember his failures, squandered opportunities, and the betrayal behind his timid refusal to fight as hard as Trump Republicans," said McCormick. "I just hope voters realize that his refusal to face the truth has nearly cost us the chance to save the world from existential dangers and put out the fire of fascism that is burning down democracy in America."

"Cory Booker missed 413 votes, so he did not show up many times; but when he did appear, he was only pretending to fight for the things we care about," said McCormick. "However, even if you believe he was not only pretending, you still have to admit that Cory Booker did not win those fights to protect abortion and reproductive freedom, or to preserve the Voting Rights Act, or stop gun violence, or reverse the deadly consequences of the climate crisis.  New Jersey’s middle class shrank by three percent during his time in the US Senate, and of the $88 trillion that was stolen from workers since 1975, $37 trillion has been swiped by the superwealthy in that period."