Trump Praises Democrat Scott Colom Days After Mississippi Senate Upset

Donald Trump had warm words Thursday for the Democrat who just flipped a Mississippi Senate seat, a rare hat-tip from the Republican president to a member of the opposing party. On Stephen A. Smith's podcast, the president credited Scott Colom for a gutsy campaign stop: working the line at Trump's own rally.

The praise landed two days after the AP called the race for Colom on Wednesday, handing him a win over Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Colom, a 43-year-old local prosecutor, becomes Mississippi's first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction. Local officials spent several days processing absentee and provisional ballots — called affidavit ballots in Mississippi — before the result was settled.

Trump recounted how Colom turned up at his Corinth rally last month, where the president had traveled to campaign for Hyde-Smith. Trump said Colom walked the long line of waiting supporters, telling them what a good job he had done. He added that he gave Colom a lot of credit for it.

At that same Corinth event, Trump had denigrated Colom as a Marxist radical, a fake and a shameless phony who pretends to be a moderate. Colom spent the hours beforehand introducing himself to Trump's staunchest MAGA supporters in line and asking about their concerns. The move drew widespread media attention and stole the spotlight in a state Republicans had expected to win easily.

It also matched Colom's playbook all campaign: hitting Trump's policies — the Iran war that drove up gas prices and tariffs that caused headaches for Mississippi farmers — without personal jabs at the president or his voters. He cast Hyde-Smith as a nonentity in Washington while vowing to look out for the interests of people in his state, riding voter discontent with the economy to an underdog win.