Trump praises Democrat Scott Colom for showing up to Mississippi rally and courting MAGA supporters

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday heaped praise on Mississippi's Sen.-elect Scott Colom for courting some of his hardcore MAGA supporters in the final days of the midterm election campaign, a rare example of the Republican president showing admiration for a Democrat.

When the president traveled to Corinth, Mississippi, last month to campaign for incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, Trump denigrated Colom as a “Marxist radical," a “fake” and a “shameless phony who pretends to be a moderate."

But on Thursday, during an appearance on Stephen A. Smith's “Straight Shooter” podcast, Trump acknowledged that Colom demonstrated chutzpah by showing up to the Trump rally to mingle with some of the Republican president's staunchest “Make America Great Again” supporters.

“I heard it the other day, where I had a rally there, and we had lines that went 10 miles long, and he campaigned on that line, telling everybody on the line what a good job he did,” Trump said of Colom, a 43-year-old local prosecutor who capitalized on the electorate's discontent with the economy in his successful underdog campaign. “I give him a lot of credit for that.”

Colom had walked along the lineup of Trump supporters waiting to get into the Corinth rally, introducing himself and asking about their concerns.

The move gained widespread media attention, stealing the spotlight from Trump's barnstorming in Mississippi, a state Republicans had expected to easily win.

It also tracked with Colom's strategy throughout the campaign of criticizing Trump’s policies — especially the Iran war that drove up gas prices and tariffs that caused headaches for Mississippi farmers — without taking personal jabs at the president or people who voted for him. Colom had sought to portray Hyde-Smith as a nonentity in Washington, while vowing that he would look out for the interests of people in his state.

The Associated Press called the tight race in Colom’s favor on Wednesday after local officials spent several days processing absentee and provisional ballots, which are called affidavit ballots in Mississippi.

With the win, Colom will become the state's first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.