For purposes of clarity, an invention called “vegan cheese” will be referred to by that name in this article. Please note that it is not, in fact, “cheese.” It is a nightmare.

What kind of man is Cory Booker? Combine the bravery of Spartacus with the hair of Vin Diesel and the diet of a yoga instructor living off a trust-fund. That’s the junior senator from New Jersey — a man who earlier this month praised the abominable trend of “incredible vegan cheese shops popping up across the country.” Such a judgement could come only from a person who has not eaten cheese in at least five years, when Booker converted from vegetarianism to veganism.

“Suddenly,” he recently told something called VegNews, “eating those eggs for me was something that didn’t align with my spirit, and I could feel it.” How exactly one senses a sudden misalignment between eggs and his own spirit remains unclear. I will assume it involves reading too much VegNews.

If the path to the presidency runs through Wisconsin, Democrats better hope Kamala Harris isn’t as crunchy as Booker, lest they all but sacrifice the Badger State to a president who serves cheeseburgers en masse to champion college athletes. It would be a bloodbath, to say the least.

But perhaps it’s appropriate that a man like Booker fuels his life with fake cheese. He fueled his career with fake friends, after all. Who could forget the tortured saga of T-Bone? After some eight years spent waxing poetic about his conveniently compelling friendship with a Newark drug dealer, Booker admitted in 2008 that T-Bone was really an “archetype.” An actual, flesh-and-blood friend of the senator’s later told National Review that Booker conceded to him T-Bone was a “composite.” The vegan cheese of people, you could say.

It should also be said that Booker notoriously fuels his career with fake outrage, using his platform in the Senate to put on the kind of transparently contrived performances that would make a high school theater teacher wince. Call it the vegan cheese of oratory.

Coupled with a love for fake dairy, the senator’s body of work serves as some helpful proof of that age-old adage. You are what you eat, it turns out, and Cory Booker is the vegan cheese of politicians.