NYT's David Brooks Somehow Spent $78 On A $17 Airport Hamburger

Photo: David Brooks/Twitter

There are a lot of things that suck about flying, but one of the most frustrating ones is just how expensive food and drinks can be. A lot of the most frequent flyers are on business trips, which means they can expense their meals, so there isn’t much incentive for airport restaurants to price things relatively reasonably. So if you’re just a regular working-class person flying home to see family or something and need to eat, you better be prepared to pay up, something conservative commentator David Brooks recently found out the hard way.

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On Wednesday, presumably before a flight, Brooks posted a photo of a burger and fries, adding, “This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport. This is why Americans think the economy is terrible.” As a regular working-class man who is no stranger to working long shifts at the only-writing-a-couple-bad-columns-a-month factory, he makes a great point. $78 for a burger and fries is ridiculous! A family of five should not be expected to spend nearly $400 just to eat a meal at the airport! What the hell was Joe Biden thinking when he personally made burgers cost so much?

Except, as many were quick to point out, there’s no way a burger and fries actually cost $78 unless Brooks included an absolutely massive tip. Internet sleuths quickly figured out that the photo was from Terminal A’s 1911 Smoke House Barbecue, where that combo costs a mere $17. That’s still a lot of money for a burger, but even so, it’s not remotely close to $78.

Then again, if you look past the part where he pulled all the vegetables off his burger like a child, you might notice what appears to be a double pour of whiskey in the photo, as well. Some might say that spending something like $50 on whiskey is just asking for a pricey final bill. But come on, can you really expect a man to order a burger without a double shot of expensive liquor? That would be absurd.

Thankfully, we have working-class hero David Brooks to point out how ridiculous Joe Biden’s inflation has gotten with an anecdote that everyone can really relate to.