NATIONAL TRAGEDY: Joey Chestnut will not be in Nathan's hot dog eating

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It’s a sad day for America, everybody.

Today, our collective hearts have been broken in an act of betrayal so dirty, so low-down, so shocking, that I don’t know if we will be able to recover as a country.

I am shooketh. The New York Post is underselling this.

This isn’t just a “beef over vegan franks.” Joey Chestnut, the hot dog king, snubbed Nathan’s, the creators of the world’s greatest dog, by partnering with the Impossible Foods brand and promoting plant-based hot dogs.

That’s right. Joey Chestnut chose plant-based vegan impossible dogs over Nathan’s.

I don’t know if there’s any return from this. I loved Joey Chestnut. I love Nathan’s hot dogs. To refuse to participate in the July 4th hot dog eating contest – America’s contest on America’s day – because you’ve been bought off by big vegan is so anti-American it physically pains me.

My stomach is churning like, well, like all of the other competitors after finishing behind Chestnut at the Nathan’s contest each year.

Joey Chestnut, perennial winner of the annual July 4th Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Competition, is out of this year’s beef barf over a deal he made to represent a different wiener brand, The Post has learned.

And not just any brand, but Impossible Foods, which recently launched a vegan frankfurter impostor made from plants …

A rep for Major League Eating (MLE), which Nathan’s sanctions to run the event, said the organizers bent over backwards to meet Chestnut’s various other demands. They even agreed to let him participate in a rival Labor Day dog-eating fest to be taped by Netflix as long as no hot dog brand was mentioned.

But they said they drew the line on letting Chestnut pitch for a different dog.

An attack on Nathan’s is an attack on me.