EAST BRUNSWICK - When Donald Trump came to Pennsylvania earlier this week, he indulged one of his favorite demagogic past times: lying about how things are more affordable now that he's president, while bashing undocumented workers. Brad Cohen, the Democratic mayor of East Brunswick, says Trump must live in a bubble, surrounded by people who don't give him accurate information. Running for Congress in CD-12, Cohen - a medical doctor by trade - says his profession prepared him for politics not so much in the area of patient care, as much as what he gathers from regularly interacting with real people, who have real needs.

For them, Cohen's patients, life is unaffordable, and they need government to help, not to harm, and certainly not to flamboyantly epitomize prejudices, bigotries, and self-delusions.

"He has no sense of reality," the mayor said of the President, in one of his favorite coffee shops on Route 18. "The reality is people are having a hard time covering costs, including health insurance costs and grocery costs. He was going to fix that on day one and now we're close to 365 days in and it's worse."

The doctor, a gynecologist at St. Peter's Hospital, said he wouldn't blame the widening gap between rich and poor in this country and the weakening of the middle class, only on Trump, but the sitting President's first term tax cuts made matters worse for most and his second term tariffs "benefit his friends and hurt people like you and me."

As for the rest of the Republican Party?

"Tone deaf," said Cohen, who expresses grave concern about what he sees as an intensifying totalitarian siege with Trump, characterized by a combination of Congress ceding its powers and the administration trampling due process.

"There is a process we have in place in a democratic civil society that is being ignored right now and let us not forget that you're judged in the manner you treat the lowliest among us," said Cohen. "This is an administration that is dropping bombs on ships without suspicion" and arresting alleged immigration offenders without regard for the rule of law.

All the while, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) enables Trump.

"Every third grader learns that there are three co-equal branches of government, and Congress right now is giving him a pass," said Cohen. "We need to take back Congress, exercise the power of the purse, and take back those things that have been given to the president."

Serving on the local School Board in this Middlesex County town of almost 50,000 residents, Cohen first ran for mayor back in 2016. He came into office determined to revamp the Route 18 corridor, organizing a bipartisan redevelopment agency so the community - and not just the executive - could assume ownership of East Brunswick's development direction and be part of the town's success story. The result, says Cohen, is a balance of development, including several largescale projects, including retail, restaurants and business and necessary affordable housing, that takes into account the distinct character of four different neighborhoods within the 24-square-mile municipality. Critically, the mayor adds, "In elected office, I have never raised municipal taxes more than one percent a year."

As a congressional candidate, Cohen wants voters to examine not only his elected office record, but to remember his core competency as a physician, at an especially critical time. "We have a health access and health insurance problem in this country right now," says Cohen. The grind-down of Obamacare - which Trump ran on, and which many members of his own party continue to champion - will simply exacerbate the crisis, and they will be begging for universal healthcare in a couple of years.

"This is not who we are," said the mayor. "It is grossly unfair in a country like ours that there are people falling behind" because of lack of access to healthcare.

In addition to supplying his expertise on that front, Cohen makes the case that as a mayor he possesses a unique understanding of the core of the 12th District and its needs - particularly in several critical areas. "We have a corridor, from Princeton and Trenton up 287 into parts of Hillsborough and Bridgewater, which is the Silicon Valley of the life sciences, or Einstein Alley, which supplies businesses and research that feed the economy.

"The President [through the priorities in his so-called 'big, beautiful bill'] is attacking healthcare, attacking science and research and education," said Cohen. "This is our meat and potatoes. We are a brain center. Companies like to come here because there is a workforce here. ...When those companies come here, they bring in jobs and feed businesses, schools and support the economy."

Government should support, not hinder or wage war on this resource, the mayor argues.

"At the federal level we need to have incentivizing policies. The President is not going to be president forever and the Congress is not going to be Republican forever. This is where federal funds can be used to support what we're doing on the state level [to grow the brain center economy here]."

In addition, Cohen wants to be part of a new priority in Congress to reverse the President's Gateway Tunnel termination policy and to strengthen the SALT Tax deduction, which Trump originally eliminated.

"Transportation access attracts people to live here - access to the city - and we all know that's always been problematic, with people complaining about traffic and the difficulty of commuters to get in and out of the city," said Cohen. "Gateway [which Trump terminated earlier this year] is one of those solutions, which would make it a little easier, which has fallen victim to unhealthy polarization. I would advocate for money to come back to our transit system as a critical issue for residents getting in and out of the city."

As the mayor ramps up his congressional campaign and prepares to contend in a Democratic Primary for the seat now occupied by U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12), he said of the congresswoman, "She is a very faith-driven individual, which I value. She goes by our convictions. We have not always agreed on everything. But I don't always agree with my wife on everything. We're a big tent party - on most issues we agree. The congresswoman has a lifetime in public service and deserves credit time as someone who has advocated on behalf of people who don't have the ability to advocate for themselves."

Cohen describes his own religious background as fundamental to his character.

"For me there is a moral and ethical background that comes from the Judaic background, and our ethics and morals come from the same place [as Christianity]," he said.

He lives, he said, by the Hebrew dictum: Tikkun olam or "to repair the world.

"My job as a public servant is to pass on to the next generation a world better than the way I found it, with little steps at a time," said Cohen.  "We don't do that all the time, and fell in a little divot now, or more than a little divot, but the right people just have to stand up."

So, he's standing up by running for Congress, proud of the America he hails from, a grandfather who started the meatcutters union in Paterson, lessons about the country reinforced by John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Of King and Kennedy, he said, "They were not perfect, but today we pick at the imperfections. What they stood for was bigger than themselves."

What Cohen sees is not what Trump sees.

He tends to patients with real problems, woes, and dreams, and he feels prepared to represent them, proud of his record, which includes annual an charity gala that raises funds for critical programs, including youth sports and special needs.

You won't find him on a stage ranting in unreality. More likely, Cohen notes, he'll be - in his words - "talking to people" in his beloved home state of New Jersey.