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.