The rally's lightest moment came right at the start. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, the senator the night was for, stepped up to introduce the president — and was done in about two seconds, one of the shortest introductions of Trump's rally career. Trump noticed. Taking the microphone at the Crossroads Arena in Corinth on Monday night, he told the crowd that her two-second introduction had just gained her a lot of votes, drawing one of the biggest reactions of the night.
It was a quick flash of the chemistry between the president and the senator he calls "100 percent MAGA" — and it set up a night that turned hard and serious the moment Trump turned to the man trying to take her seat, as the original report below tells it.
— Previously posted on Tuesday, October 27, 2026 —
President Donald Trump took the stage at the Crossroads Arena in Corinth, Mississippi, on Monday night and went straight at the man trying to take Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith's seat, calling Democratic challenger Scott Colom a "fake" and a "shameless phony who pretends to be a moderate" — and a Marxist radical besides — eight days before the November 3 midterm elections. The attack landed in the middle of one of the strangest scenes of the campaign season: hours earlier, Colom himself had shown up at the rally site to work the line of Trump supporters, saying he had come to listen to the president's voters and hear what was on their minds.
Trump's case to the crowd was that Mississippi is not a race he is willing to leave to chance. He told supporters he came because Hyde-Smith is doing great but he could not take a chance, and he urged them to turn out as if he were on the ballot himself. The heart of his argument was that Colom's moderate presentation is an act: that the Democrat's record and his politics are those of the radical left, whatever image he sells on the trail, and that a state Trump has carried three times by wide margins should not hand a Senate seat to a man hiding what he is. Hyde-Smith, who spoke before the president, made the same case in her own terms, framing the election as a choice between socialism and capitalism and calling Colom soft on crime.
Colom had made his own play for the spotlight earlier in the day. Before the president arrived in Corinth, the Democratic nominee went to the rally site and spoke with Trump supporters waiting to get in, and held a news conference in the city arguing that Hyde-Smith has stopped listening to Mississippians. His pitch to the president's voters was that they deserve a senator who will listen to them and care about what they are going through, and his campaign themes were lower grocery prices, an end to endless wars and health care for Mississippi families. He has also spent the fall challenging Hyde-Smith — and the president — to debate him, arguing the senator is scared to defend her record.
Colom is the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate and serves as district attorney for Mississippi's 16th Judicial District, in the Columbus area in the northern part of the state. A victory would make him Mississippi's first Black senator since Reconstruction. His campaign has drawn heavyweight Democratic backing in the closing stretch: former President Barack Obama has endorsed him, former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned with him in Columbus on October 22, and the Senate Democrats' super PAC has put a late $1.2 million advertising investment behind his bid.
The race Colom is trying to steal is one Republicans expected to watch from a distance. Hyde-Smith, in the Senate since 2018 and seeking a second full term, remains the favorite in a state Trump won three times by an average of nearly 20 points, and Mississippi has not elected a new Democratic senator since 1947 — the party last won a Senate race there in 1982. But the contest has tightened enough to pull the president into northeast Mississippi in the final week: national forecasters moved the race from safe Republican to likely Republican in mid-October, and the most recent public poll, a Democratic-sponsored survey completed October 22, put Hyde-Smith at 43 percent and Colom at 40, with independent candidate Ty Pinkins at 6 and 9 percent undecided. Trump also used the Corinth stop to back Republican Rep. Trent Kelly, and local coverage noted the visit was the first by a sitting president to Corinth since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After his turn outside the arena, Colom posted about the experience, writing that walking the line outside the Trump rally reminded him that more unites Mississippians than divides them. He listed what he heard from the president's supporters — getting foreign money out of elections, keeping the border secure and taking care of veterans — thanked the people who took the time to talk with him, and said he would represent every Mississippian whether they voted for him or not. No direct Colom response to the "phony" attack itself had been reported as of Monday night.
The Corinth stop opened a closing-week blitz for the president, with more rallies planned in states he won comfortably in 2024, including Texas, South Carolina, Iowa and a Saturday stop in Kansas. With eight days left, the Mississippi race is exactly the kind his team cannot afford to lose: Senate control runs through states like this one, and a Democratic upset in deep-red Mississippi would redraw the map on the night of November 3. Trump's message in Corinth was the simple one he has carried all fall — pretend he is on the ballot, and do not take anything for granted.
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