Former President Bill Clinton told a Tupelo crowd that Mississippi voters already understand why everyday prices feel out of reach, and that they know gasoline costs more “because of that war in the Gulf.”
“The people of Mississippi understand why something they used to be able to afford is out of reach. They know good and well that gas prices are higher because of that war in the Gulf,” Clinton said Friday, Oct. 30, at the Link Centre in Tupelo while campaigning for Democratic Senate nominee Scott Colom against Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Earlier in the same speech he said, “And you got these higher gas prices, that’s the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz,” and that high gas prices are “the direct result of a not very well thought out attack on Iran.”
He added that “We’ve got these higher gas prices, that’s the Iran war and the Straight of Hormuz” [sic], and put the crowd at about 500. Mississippi Today covered the Link Centre stop the same day as a Colom rally of roughly 400 people, with Clinton, James Carville, and Mitch Landrieu on the program. The paper quoted Clinton saying Colom would put “Mississippi first” rather than “MAGA first,” criticizing tariffs that hit Tupelo furniture makers, and mocking Hyde-Smith’s WLOX comment on beef prices as “a shopping tip, not a policy.” “Because you make so much furniture, you not only pay more for the food, you pay more to sit down at the table and eat it,” Clinton said of tariffs, in that report.
In the WTVA recording, Clinton followed the Gulf-war gas line by saying Mississippians also know that “drought and high feed costs help shrink the beef herd,” that “rebuilding it takes years,” and that “tight supplies help keep prices high.” “There isn’t a button in the Oval Office that makes all that go away,” he said. “We need to be honest about that. But public service has to be more than telling people to get used to less.”
The Energy Information Administration’s weekly retail survey released Oct. 27 listed U.S. regular gasoline at $4.269 a gallon and Gulf Coast regular at $3.702, with U.S. on-highway diesel at $6.352, in the EIA gasoline and diesel update. AAA’s daily state averages for Nov. 2 put Mississippi regular at $3.7687 against a national regular average of $4.1694, on AAA’s state averages page.
President Donald Trump addressed gas prices four days earlier in Corinth while stumping for Hyde-Smith. In a WLBT interview published from that visit, he said he inherited historic inflation, that prices had come down, and that gasoline would fall again when Iran fighting ends. “Now, when the war ends, which will be very soon, we’ve won. When the war ends, we’re going to have gasoline. I was in Iowa. It was at $1.85 a gallon before I had to go to Iran to do what I had to do,” he told WLBT’s Courtney Ann Jackson, adding that pumps there also showed $1.95 and that prices “will get it down to those levels and it’s going to come down very fast.”
At the Corinth rally the same day, Trump told the crowd he had expected oil to jump far more and was ready for that cost. “I thought the price of oil was going to go much, much higher. And I was fully prepared to do it because we really had no choice,” he said. He said oil was “going to stop very soon,” that the United States was “taking more oil out of the Hormuz Strait than we did prior to the war starting,” and that Iowa pumps at $1.85 and $1.95 were the benchmark he wants back once the fight is finished. “The oil’s going to come rocketing down as soon as we finish off our little situation with a group of absolute killers,” he also said in that transcript.
Hyde-Smith, in a WLOX interview days before Clinton’s Tupelo stop, said gas and food prices are the two issues she hears about most from Mississippians. “Gasoline, unless you want to ride the bicycle, that’s your only option,” she said, clarifying that an earlier “other proteins” remark referred to cheaper meat choices at the store. “There’s nothing to replace that gasoline unless you want to ride a bicycle,” she added. Trump in Corinth cast Colom as a “Marxist radical left Soros district attorney” and urged voters to reelect Hyde-Smith. Colom told Mississippi Today at a Jackson event the night before Tupelo, “You were promised no more endless wars. I’m going to give you no more endless wars.”
WAPT noted that Trump had already campaigned for Hyde-Smith in Corinth and that former Vice President Kamala Harris had appeared with Colom the prior week. Colom told the Tupelo audience he brought Clinton because of what tariffs have done to furniture and small business in North Mississippi. “The reason I wanted to bring President Clinton to Tupelo is because I understand what tariffs have done to the furniture industry,” Colom said, according to WAPT.
Clinton told Tupelo that Mississippians know gas is higher because of the war in the Gulf and, earlier in the same speech, because of the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz. Trump told Corinth and WLBT that oil jumped because of that war and that prices will drop when it ends, while saying he was prepared for higher oil and that Hormuz flows under U.S. blockade now exceed pre-war volumes. Hyde-Smith told WLOX that gasoline has no substitute short of a bicycle. EIA and AAA tables record what drivers pay in Mississippi and nationwide without assigning a single cause. The Defense Casualty Analysis System listed 22 U.S. deaths in the Iran war as of Oct. 28.