Herman Cain, a former presidential candidate who President Donald Trump once considered for the Federal Reserve, has died after battling and being hospitalized with the coronavirus. He was 74 years old.
Cain was a 74-year-old survivor of stage 4 colon cancer, Cain had been a business executive who founded and ran a chain of pizza parlors and the board chairman of a branch of Kansas City’s Federal Reserve Bank. He later moved into Republican politics and eventually became a presidential candidate.
Cain was a vocal supporter of Trump. He attended the POTUS’s Oklahoma rally before being diagnosed with the disease. That rally was called dangerous by many experts in the field. Scientists believed that the rally would help spread the virus since so many people could possibly be at the event. Many Trump supporters have refused to wear masks, social distance, or follow other guidelines that were issued by the CDC.
Locally, some officials tried to prevent the rally from happening as cases were spiking in the state.
“Whether or not it’s going to work or not, we don’t know, but the chances are even though it was a crowded room of people, if they took precautions, probably not going to be a big uptick,” he said.
After he contracted the virus, his office denied that the rally was where he caught the virus:
“I realize people will speculate about the Tulsa rally, but Herman did a lot of traveling the past week,” its editor, Dan Calabrese wrote. “I don’t think there’s any way to trace this to the one specific contact that caused him to be infected. We’ll never know.”
As of a few days ago, it was reported that Cain was recovering from the virus and his condition was improving.
