4th Congressional District Democrats held a (now annual) gathering at Truman State Park for fellowship, food, and speaking.

The Keynote speaker was Will Westmoreland.

Will Westmoreland (D).

Will Westmoreland (D): ‘….We’ve lost thirty-seven percent of our agricultural markets around the world because of these tariff wars. Thirty-seven percent. China wasn’t prepared the first time around. All their hogs were sick, they didn’t have any supplies of row crops. Well, one thing you can’t say about the Chinese is they just sit around and wait for another disaster. They don’t do that.

They went down to Brazil. They helped cut down about six percent more of the rainforest. The put in railroad tracks and better rail to the coasts and then they built better harbors for those big grain [inaudible] ships that come through there. And they went from buying thirteen percent of their row crops for Brazil to now buying forty-three percent of their row crops from Brazil.

Oh, and by the way, because he’s a Trump mini me we gave Argentina a twenty-billion dollar bailout, which they use to abolish the tax on soybean sales so that China could come in and but billions of dollars of soybeans from them subsidized by the American government.

You can’t make this stuff up….’

Will Westmoreland (D): ‘…When I talk about meeting people halfway, I’ve got a good friend in St. Louis that told me, Will, you need to add something to your speech, we don’t meet Nazis and we don’t meet racists halfway.

It’s not who I’m talking about, okay? I’m talking about like people like that row crop farmer in St. Clair County who got smacked over the head with an anvil three times and finally decided, you know what, maybe it’s not in my best interest to vote for this guy.

Those are the people we can meet halfway…’

Will Westmoreland (D): ‘…I think of three and a half more years with this guy and it just makes me break out in a sweat and I want to sit down in my recliner and just not get up again…’

‘…We’ve got Democrats running in places around this country where Trump won by twenty-five percent and we’ve got Democrats knocking off those candidates because people are so upset. He’s not above water in any single category that we measure a president under. In every single category that we measure presidential approval he’s below fifty percent. And in almost every category he’s almost down to thirty-nine percent. People do not like what’s happening.

Just because the media loves to put the little Joseph Goebbels on the TV from the Whitehouse and all the other people that you see and they give them air time and they yap, and yap, and yap….Those are not the voices of America. Thank God. Those are not the voices of America.

Those are voices that we heard a long time ago when we sent the greatest generation from this country over to Europe to fight against it and over to the Pacific to fight against it…’

‘…I hear a lot of similarities between their rhetoric and the rhetoric of Fascists that we heard back in the day.

So we’ve got to keep fighting. It feels different now, doesn’t it? For those of you who are a little gray around the ears like I am, it feels different this time. I mean, yeah, we were fighting for important causes in the eighties and the nineties, etcetera. But this time it feels different. It feels like it’s not just a policy that’s at stake. It feels like it’s our country that’s at stake. [voices] The soul of our country…’

‘…They can have our Democracy when they pry it from our cold, dead hands. And I hate to be melodramatic about it, but that’s how I feel about it. I’m gonna fight to the very end to defend this Democracy and I know you will, too.

The good news is this. The majority of people in this country are on your side…’

Around 100 individuals from counties across the district attended.

“Vote”