Former presidential candidate and ardent Trump supporter Herman Cain has died after a battle with COVID-19. The Georgia-born politician was 74.
According to WSB-TV, Cain had been hospitalized for over a month in an Atlanta hospital after attending a Trump rally in which he was photographed without a mask.
“We knew when he was first hospitalized with COVID-19 that this was going to be a rough fight,” a spokesperson said on his website.
“He had trouble breathing and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. We all prayed that the initial meds they gave him would get his breathing back to normal, but it became clear pretty quickly that he was in for a battle.”
Cain battled stage-4 liver cancer in the past thus making him high-risk once he caught the virus. He’d been in the hospital since testing positive and was reportedly having trouble breathing just days before his death.
Officials told the news station that they were unsure how Cain contracted the virus but photos showed Cain at Trump’s Tulsa rally on June 20 maskless.
Cain’s staff announced June 27 that he had tested positive for the virus, WSB-TV reports.
Cain grew up in Georgia and attended Morehouse College. He was a business leader and the ex-CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, who believed that his corporate success could translate into a political career. He ran for president in 2012 as a Republican. He was the host of The Herman Cain Show at HermanCain.com and Herman Cain’s American on NewsmaxTV.
Cain leaves behind a wife, two children and several grandchildren.