Nine Words

Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982 and has not unseated a sitting senator since 1942, and the President carried it two years ago by 23 points, and on Monday night he was in Corinth, in a county he won with 84 percent, standing in a 7,700-seat arena for 83 minutes on behalf of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. "I'm here because Cindy's doing great," he said, hoarse, "but I just got to make sure. I can't take a chance." On Friday he had said, "They've asked me to go." On Sunday she told WLOX, "The White House offered, and we said, sure, come right on in." On Monday he told the arena she had told him, "I don't need any rallies, sir." The paper would like to begin there, because whichever of the three is true it is the whole story: a Republican incumbent in the reddest Senate seat in the country and the President who carried it by 23 agreed between them that she could not be left alone with the voters, and the President came, and in the eighty-three minutes he told the arena that her opponent, a district attorney, was "a Marxist, radical left, Soros district attorney" who had released "one out of every three criminals arrested in his district without charges," a figure that has no source anyone has produced. More than an hour in, he called the Senator to the microphone. He kissed her on the forehead on the way up. "Is this not the best president in our lifetime?" she said, and that was all of it, nine words, about three seconds, and she stepped back. "Thank you, Cindy. I love that," he said. "Sometimes they get up and they talk for 10 minutes," and he called it one of the best he had ever heard. The paper has watched a great many Republicans this month decide how close to stand to the President. This is the first one who said the whole thing and then nothing.

Here is the woman. Cindy Hyde-Smith was appointed to Thad Cochran's seat by Governor Bryant in April 2018 and held it that November in a runoff, 53.9 to 46.1, three weeks after she said of a supporter that "if he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row," in Mississippi, and declined to apologize, and the President flew in for two rallies the day before the vote. In 2020 she ran six points behind him. On January 6, 2021, after the building was cleared, she was one of six senators to vote to throw out Arizona's electors and one of seven for Pennsylvania's, and her statement said, "I cannot in good conscience support certification." In 2023 she refused to return the blue slip on her present opponent's nomination to the federal bench, which killed it; her statement allowed that he was "smart and well-liked in his district" and that "I simply cannot support his nomination to serve on the federal bench in Mississippi for a lifetime," citing George Soros and "legislation to protect female athletes." Senator Durbin's office called it obstruction of a highly qualified nominee. Mr. Colom says he has forgiven her. The paper has not been asked to.

The record this year is the President's record, in a state that cannot afford it. On March 4 she voted against ending the war with Iran, and her statement, to her credit, was a full paragraph and not nine words: the resolution was "primarily rooted in a deep, personal dislike for President Trump among some of my colleagues." Diesel in Mississippi this morning is $5.86 a gallon against $3.24 a year ago, up 81 percent, and regular is $3.81 against $2.60, and a trucking owner in the state told the Free Press each of his trucks now burns $2,000 to $2,500 a week in fuel. Her answer on gasoline, to WLOX on Sunday: "unless you want to ride the bicycle, that's your only option." Her answer on beef, in February, was that Mississippians "have so many proteins to choose from," and given the chance on Sunday to take it back she said, "there are some cheaper prices. And that's what that statement was about." On October 13, when the President announced he would buy Russian diesel from Mr. Putin to cover the shortage, twelve senators, six of them Republicans, wrote that the deal was "a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies." Senator Hyde-Smith did not sign, and the paper could not find a sentence from her about it anywhere. On the big bill she voted yes in July 2025, after saying in April that "Medicaid is not going anywhere" and "Nothing is going to happen to Medicaid," and her statement on passage does not contain the word Medicaid; it says the alternative was a tax increase. Mississippi's hospitals say they could lose up to a billion dollars over the decade. The Greenwood hospital, 120 years old, filed for bankruptcy in April. On the Epstein files, in September 2025, she voted to table the amendment that would have ordered them released, 51 to 49, with a thumbs-up the state's Democratic chairman called gleeful; the files were released two months later by unanimous consent, so that the one vote she cast on the subject was the one against. Her defense, by email to the Free Press, is that "a procedural vote on one amendment is not the same thing as saying the files should remain secret," and that she supports releasing whatever can legally be released; an Epstein survivor is on Mississippi television this week saying otherwise, in an ad a Democratic super PAC has run more than 1,200 times in seven days. On tariffs, her farmers got a $12 billion federal bridge payment in December and she thanked the administration for "moving swiftly and decisively to use the resources Congress provided," which is how a senator says thank you for the hole you dug her. The paper ran its test, which is to find one time the President changed course because she asked him to, and found a catfish letter to the Agriculture Secretary in June whose answer nobody can locate, and $60 million in FEMA money for two declared disasters, which is the mail. She told a reporter in July that the President "calls me more than I call him." The paper believes it. He has never had to take a call.

She will not debate. Mr. Colom accepted two television invitations and offered a third at a venue and moderator of her choosing, and her campaign manager's answer was, "Losing candidates always want a debate about debates." Her own answer, to WLOX on Sunday, was, "He can't get a crowd in a room if I wasn't in there. So why would I even acknowledge that?" Her warm-up speech in Corinth, which ran eleven minutes before the three seconds, was the campaign in full: "This is socialism versus capitalism, communism versus democracy, and big government versus the free market." Mr. Colom is "the transgender defender," and "the most radical candidate to run in Mississippi for literally our entire lives." Her closing: "You kill a gnat with a sledgehammer, and you're about to meet my sledgehammer." The paper would note for the record that the gnat is a four-term district attorney with a 94 percent trial record, and that the sledgehammer needed Air Force One.

Scott Colom is the district attorney of the sixteenth circuit, Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxubee, since he beat a thirty-year incumbent in 2015, the first Black DA the district has had, re-elected unopposed in 2019 and again in 2023, the son of a chancery judge and a lawyer who worked for Reagan, and if he wins he would be Mississippi's first Black senator since Reconstruction. The paper will give the reader the worst of him, as it has for everyone this week. Two weeks ago his campaign trumpeted a poll showing the race tied at 52 to 48 as "massive momentum," and the poll was a fabrication, the pollster admitted making it up, Newsweek retracted, and the paper has found no retraction from Mr. Colom. In September 2025, the week he launched, he posted a video of himself calling a number he said was the Senator's and a woman answering, and when challenged his campaign called it a parody; the state Republican chairman wrote the federal authorities. This month he ran an unlabeled AI video of the Senator hiding her face behind a folder and running from reporters through the Capitol, captioned "based on a true story," and the state party has asked the Attorney General to investigate it under Mississippi's law against deceptive AI depictions of a candidate within 90 days of an election; his campaign manager's answer was, "Clearly this is a joke." His 2023 opponent said his office was defined by "soft plea deals" and diversion; the voters re-elected him anyway, and the President's one-in-three number has no paper behind it. The paper counts the fake poll, the fake phone call and the fake chase against a man who wants to be a senator, and it counts them. His platform is no federal income tax under $75,000, a minimum wage above $7.25 for the first time since 2009, cancel the Medicaid cuts, suspend the gas tax, and no corporate or lobbyist money. His line is "Cindy High Prices," and his best line, after she sent for the President, was "I challenge Donald Trump to a debate." The real polls, every one of them from the Democratic side, have her ahead by three to six: 43 to 40, 44 to 38, 42 to 39. Cook moved the seat off Solid Republican on October 20. Mr. Colom has outraised her two to one since July and outspent her on the air, $4.6 million to $3.2 million, and this week the two parties' Senate super PACs each put in a million-something, the Democrats' first dollar in Mississippi in memory and the Republicans' to "swamp" it, with another half million from the Democratic Senate committee behind it.

The Daily Buffoon endorses Scott Colom for Senate from Mississippi. It does so with the fake poll on the record, because the alternative is a senator who has held the seat eight years without passing a bill with her name on it, who said Medicaid was going nowhere and voted it somewhere, who votes to continue a war that has put diesel at $5.86 in the poorest state in the union and will not write a line about where the replacement diesel is coming from, who tried to uncertify an election, who killed a judgeship over a billionaire's name, who will not debate, and whose entire contribution to the President's rescue mission was a question. Mississippi has no early voting, but 56,049 absentee ballots had reached the circuit clerks by Monday against 22,221 at the same point in 2022, and the last day to vote absentee in person at the clerk's office is Saturday, October 31, until noon. The paper's forecasts, dated October 29, so they can be checked: there will be no debate. The Senator will not say the word "Medicaid" in any statement before November 3. No letter, bill or statement with her name on it about Russian diesel will exist on Election Day. And she will win, if she wins, by less than half of the President's 23 points, in a state where the President had to fly in to make sure.

Four clowns. The paper does not rate Senator Hyde-Smith a buffoon for the nine words; a lot of politicians would have said more and meant less. It rates her for the eight years around them, in which the woman who told Mississippi she works for "the Mississippians that I'm looking at right now" has taken every call from Washington and returned none from Greenwood. "Endorsements don't win elections," she said Monday. "Votes wins elections." The paper agrees with the sentence and with the grammar, which is how Mississippi talks. It would only add that a senator who believed it would not have needed the plane.