Trump heaps surprise praise on Democrat Scott Colom after his historic Mississippi Senate upset

Scott Colom will become Mississippi's first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction after The Associated Press called his tight race against Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in his favor on Wednesday.Local officials spent several days processing absentee and provisional ballots, called affidavit ballots in Mississippi, before making the call. Colom, a 43-year-old local prosecutor, ran a successful underdog campaign that capitalized on the electorate's discontent with the economy. On Thursday, President Donald Trump heaped praise on the Democrat during an appearance on Stephen A. Smith's “Straight Shooter” podcast, a rare example of the Republican president admiring a member of the opposing party.President Donald Trump on Thursday heaped praise on Mississippi's Sen.-elect Scott Colom (Reuters)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. “I give him a lot of credit for that.”The rally in question took place in Corinth, Mississippi, last month, when the president traveled there to campaign for Hyde-Smith. At that event, Trump denigrated Colom as a “Marxist radical," a “fake” and a “shameless phony who pretends to be a moderate."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 drew widespread media attention, stealing the spotlight from Trump's barnstorming in Mississippi, a state Republicans had expected to win easily.It also tracked with Colom's strategy throughout the campaign: 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 sought to portray Hyde-Smith as a nonentity in Washington, while vowing to look out for the interests of people in his state.