Herman Cain, a former Republican presidential candidate and enthusiastic supporter of President Donald Trump, died after reportedly contracting COVID-19 at a Trump political campaign rally in Tulsa, OK, on June 20, 2020.
Cain refused to wear a face mask that medical experts said helps prevent the spread of the coronavirus that had already killed a hundred thousand Americans.
https://time.com/5874219/herman-cain-dies-legacy-trump/
Cain was photographed neither wearing a face mask nor observing the social distancing guidelines recommended by public health experts.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/13/herman-cain-twitter-democrats-joe-biden
In mid-June Trump told the Wall Street Journal that Americans wore face masks not to prevent the spread of the coronavirus but to signal their disapproval of him.
Cain tweeted several days after the Tulsa event he would not wear a mask at a July 4th Trump event at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
“Masks will not be mandatory for the event, which will be attended by President Trump. PEOPLE ARE FED UP!” Cain tweeted.
He was diagnosed with COVID on June 29.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-cain-idUSKCN24V2OD
Several close Trump staffers, include Chris Christie and Hope Hicks, also contracted COVID at the event.
Cain then returned from the dead in late August to post: “it looks like the virus is not as deadly as the mainstream media first made it out to be,” Forbes magazine reported.
“Herman Cain continues to speak from beyond the grave through his Twitter account, with a now-deleted tweet claiming that coronavirus is ‘not as deadly’ as ‘mainstream media’ made it out to be,” Forbes said, “raising questions about Twitter policies for deceased account holders.”
Trump aides blamed themselves for Cain’s death, telling ABC reporter Will Steakin, “We killed Herman Cain.” The quote was included in ABC’s chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl’s book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.
Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, said in her book that Meadows told her that the campaign killed Cain. Meadows denied making the remark.
Cain, 74, the former chief executive officer of Godfather’s Pizza, unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2012.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-cain-idUSKCN24V2OD
He withdrew from the race after a series of women accused him of sexual misconduct when he was head of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s.
Cain called stories about sexual harassment allegations against him “a witch hunt” and repeatedly said that he never harassed female employees. Politico reported that the National Restaurant Association paid settlements to two former employees who claimed Cain had sexually harassed them.
https://www.politico.com/story/2011/10/cain-acknowledges-settlement-067233
Time magazine include this comparison between Cain and Trump:
“Neither had been elected to any political post before running for the White House,” the article said. “Both delighted in needling the Republican Party’s establishment and the mainstream press. They shot from the hip, campaigned in slogans and didn’t much care to learn the details. Both men were dogged by allegations of sexual affairs and inappropriate behavior, and both denied the allegations; they proved disqualifying for Cain—who ended his bid in December 2011 under intense scrutiny—but they did not derail Trump just one election cycle later.”
