Schumer takes heat for grilling photo in Father's Day post
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer might be feeling the burn from critics: He's getting roasted for a Father's Day grilling snapshot.
The New York Democrat posted a photo on the social platform X on Sunday to mark the dad-centric holiday, showing him grinning while balancing a burger on a spatula.
"Our family has lived in an apartment building for all our years," Schumer wrote in the post, "but my daughter and her wife just bought a house with a backyard and for the first time we're having a barbecue with hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill!"
"Father's Day Heaven!" the 73-year-old senator exclaimed.
But the barbecuing lawmaker fanned the flames of criticism from grilled meat mavens with a whopper-sized snafu, firing up conservative media detractors who mocked a seemingly uncooked hamburger being topped with a slice of cheese.
"I get that you're playing to the masses," Donald Trump, Jr. said on X, "but literally no one puts cheese on a raw beef patty."
"If you need help learning how to do basic grilling stuff let me know. Nice try relating though," the 46-year-old son of former President Trump said.
"I’m not a grill master by any stretch. You don’t have to be to know Chuck Schumer has no clue what he’s doing," another X user responded.
By Monday, the post disappeared from X. Schumer's office didn't respond to ITK's request for comment.
Schumer's seemingly undercooked episode, some critics noted, was reminiscent of other flame-related foul-ups by politicians.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) was mocked in 2022 for posing for a grilling pic while sporting a spotless white dress.
In 2021, Terry McAuliffe, at the time a Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate, took some heat for posting a Fourth of July video that appeared to show him cooking hot dogs and hamburgers on a grill that wasn't powered on. The Virginia Republican Party targeted McAuliffe in a fiery reaction to the burger-flipping brouhaha, calling it "McAuliffe's week that never got cooking."