There was a song by Ratt in the 1980s that went something like this: "Round and round. What comes around, goes around. I'll tell you why..." For incumbent U.S. Rep. Tom Kean, Jr. (R-7) the "why" concerns the continuing high prices of goods and their devastating impact on families in New Jersey's 7th Congressional District.

In 2022, when he first won the seat from Tom Malinowski during the Biden midterm elections, Kean repeatedly complained about the high cost of goods, specifically eggs and milk.

In addition, on his campaign website that year, according to NJ Spotlight News, Kean said "his vision is to 'end wasteful spending to... promote American industry to open up supply chains, support middle class tax relief, back energy independence to lower gas prices.'”

In 2024, Donald Trump, looking to regain the White House after refusing to acknowledge the results of the 2020 election and refusing to stop a riot on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, which resulted in the death of Officer Brian Sicknick of New Jersey, subsequently campaigned on lowering food prices, promising to lower costs.

Well, how did that work out?

Here are the facts, courtesy of NBC News:

The average price of eggs — a frequent stand-in for inflation during the campaign — have declined from a spring 2025 peak and are now down 31% since Trump took office last year. Average orange juice prices are up 26% and ground beef prices are up 22% from January 2025. Sandwich bread prices are also up.

Grocery prices have been on the rise for most of the past six years, as the war in Iran, supply chain bottlenecks, the war in Ukraine and excessive profit-taking here in the U.S. have put a strain on consumers’ wallets.

As Trump has tripled his income from the prior years, with over $1.4 billion raked in from crypto ventures amid intense scrutiny of his abuse of power for personal financial gain, prices of goods for Americans remain elevated, with a cumulative increase since 2022 of 14%.

Of course, Kean (who reaped up to $340,000 in stock trades in June) doesn't want to talk about that as the campaign season intensifies and he draws closer to his Nov. 3rd showdown with challenger Rebecca Bennett.

Kean tweeted yesterday:

"My Democrat opponent, Rebecca Bennett for Congress, is completely unbothered that thousands of illegal aliens are on New Jersey’s voter rolls, hundreds of which have been confirmed to have recently voted in our elections. Even worse, she does not even believe that only Americans should vote in American elections. Bennett’s refusal to protect our democracy is unconscionable."

For the record (and in case you hadn't heard) Bennett was a United States Navy helicopter pilot protecting our country for over a decade. It's cute that Kean thinks he can get away with saying something like that. Her "refusal to protect our democracy is unconscionable." It's from an old and tired political playbook, used unsuccessfully by Democrats in Burlington a few years back, for example, when they tried to call retired Navy SEAL Ryan Peters "a coward."

Incidentally, Bennett, in fact, did address the issue referenced by Kean, brought to the attention of the public by Governor Mikie Sherrill.

On Tuesday, Sherrill said about 6,600 non-citizens registered to vote through the Motor Vehicle Commission between June, 2023 and June, 2024. As reported by InsiderNJ's Fred Snowflack, fewer "than 400 of them actually voted, which the governor said was probably not enough to sway any election. After all, even 400 voters spread across the whole state is not a lot of voters." Added Sherrill in a statement, "The new MVC Administrator that I appointed has begun the process of replacing the vendor responsible for administering the system."

Bennett said in response: "It's absolutely unacceptable that non-citizens were on New Jersey's voter rolls. I am glad the state is getting to the bottom of it. We need elections that are safe and secure, and there must be accountability."

Damn right, it's a serious issue.

But, of course Trump, desperate to evade a mess of his own making, chaos on every front, and having outright admitted in May that he doesn't think about regular Americans' finances, leapfrogging from horror show to horror show away from the Jeffrey Epstein case, wants to inflate this issue into the main issue, the driving issue. He wants to cast doubt on American elections and will grab anything to make the case that they should be federalized, restricted, and ultimately (yes, we know where this leads) - with masked ICE agents already terrorizing the country and acclimating mayhem - the Augusto Pinochet of our burgeoning Banana Republic will require polling places to be heavily policed.

In his language and in his actions, Kean continues to signal his willingness to happily ride this unhinged Trump train.

Anything to change the conversation.

Anything to draw the blinds on the facts.

But what comes around, goes around.

The gerrymandered 7th contains 20,000 more Republicans than Democrats. Political insiders drew up Kean's district so the son of former Governor Tom Kean., Sr., would win the 2022 election. That year, campaigning against Malinowski in the redrawn district after losing in 2020, Kean grimly talked about issues confronting "real people." Now, as the war in Iran grows in intensity and Trump "maxes out" a plane he accepted as a gift from Qatar, now deemed a security risk, cranks up his crackpot conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric and again tries to use New Jersey as exhibit A in his anti-democracy designs, Kean - Trump's endorsed candidate - loyally falls in line. He's worried about "illegal aliens" - the dehumanizing term of choice by Trump and his followers.

The crippling cost of living?

The price of goods?

The grocery bills crushing people every week as the President comes to New Jersey to get his grubby hands on the gold World Cup trophy?

Finally, those costs are all driven up by American elections, evidently, in the ready parlance of Trump and his cronies, and "illegal aliens." But just as The Donald on a national debate stage in 2020 tried to manipulate a case of local voter fraud in Paterson perpetrated by a candidate into a national-sized condemnation of the elections system, his thinning, pathetic and preposterous cries will not rise above the outrage of the people, real people, who feel the pain, every day.

The supposedly mild-mannered Kean walks a fraught path, for if he keeps following Trump - and he will - and if Trump's past is prologue, the President - already on a red-faced rampage - won't accept the results of the election in CD-7, a tough one for Kean, by every indication, even in a district drawn precisely to protect him, even home to Trump's Bedminster golf course.

What will be left then for Trump's masked MAGA Kool-Aid drinkers to storm and desecrate?