Conservative NYT columnist busted after complaining about $78 hamburger at airport

Longtime conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks was buried under an avalanche of jokes, insults and fact-checks after he complained on X, formerly known as Twitter, about having to pay $78 at a New Jersey airport for a hamburger, french fries and a drink.

Apparently attempting to make a point about the high cost of food, Brooks posted a picture of the partially eaten burger, fries, a pile of lettuce and tomatoes, several used ketchup packets and what several commenters seemed to believe was an alcoholic beverage.

Accompanying the picture he wrote, "This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport. This is why Americans think the economy is terrible."

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That, in turn, led to X moderators appending a community note fact-checking Brooks and explaining, "Based on the similar table, glass, chair, sheet and cut of fries, this is the Smokehouse Restaurant in Newark Airport Terminal A. The burger and fries cost $17."

In 2008, Brooks was accused of dreaming up "his own reality" in a report from Fairness and Accuracy in Media when, among other questionable assertions, he maintained Barack Obama wouldn't feel comfortable at an Applebee's salad bar.

He wrote, "Obama’s problem is he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who could go into an Applebee’s salad bar, and people think he fits in naturally there."

Brook's 2008 comment was seized upon by Jon Stewart, the then-host of "The Daily Show," who pointed out that Applebee's did not have salad bars, with Stewart sarcastically joking, "Clearly David Brooks is a man of the people who knows Obama would never fit in at an Applebee’s salad bar, or the McDonald’s beer garden, or a Wal-Mart observatory.”

Late Wednesday Brooks received a similar reaction to his purported $78 meal with David Simon, the creator of HBO's "The Wire" joking, "If I spend $78 on a meal at the Newark Airport, I'm boarding my flight sh*tfaced and demanding to copilot the plane. That is all."

Podcaster Mark Romano wrote, "It wasn't the hamburger and fries that cost David Brooks $78, it was the 4 double bourbons this drunk a**hole had before posting this stupid tweet."

Conservative attorney George Conway reposted the comment, "You ordered 3 drinks with that $17 burger, my dude," before adding, "And you absolutely don’t want to talk to Americans about how hard it has become to get casino markers today. Biden shows absolutely no interest in their needs, and he will pay the price at the polls."

You can see his X post below or at this link: