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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Made the Ultimate Dad Joke on April Fools’ Day

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With a flip phone in one hand and a "no signal" sign in the other, Sen. Charles Schumer speaks in New York on Jan. 17, 2016, about improving New Yorkers' cellphone service—by tracking dead zones where calls are regularly dropped.
With a flip phone in one hand and a "no signal" sign in the other, Sen. Charles Schumer speaks in New York on Jan. 17, 2016, about improving New Yorkers' cellphone service—by tracking dead zones where calls are regularly dropped.Julie Walker—AP
By Olivia B. Waxman

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted Saturday that he was finally going to ditch his 1990s-era LG flip phone.

Then the Democrat tweeted that the announcement was just an April Fools’ joke.

The senior senator from New York is often seen walking around Capitol Hill with the outdated mobile device practically glued to his ear.

“I bought 10 of them in case they run out,” he told The Huffington Post in July 2014.

One would think that the politician would need to be able to answer emails on the fly at all hours of the day, but he thinks smartphones pose a security risk. As WGRZ-TV summarized the argument that he made at a March 2016 news conference in western N.Y.:

“When e-mail started (Schumer’s chief of staff) said, ‘You know, you’re a public official. Sooner or later what’s in your e-mail will be made public. We’re not worried about anything unethical, illegal. But I know you, Chuck. … You’re going to write on the email, “Senator So-and-So, what a jerk.” And that’ll be public and that’ll end your career,'” Schumer told reporters, who laughed. “So I don’t do e-mails. I get them but I don’t do them.”

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Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com