“Let me deal with some of the particulars of the last few weeks. We knew when he was first hospitalized with COVID-19 that this was going to be a rough fight,” the statement read. “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.”
The former politician was hospitalized for the coronavirus. The announcement stated that as recently as five days ago, Cain’s doctors were hopeful that he would recover, but the recovery would not be quick. It went on to say that he never was able quite to reach the “recovery stage.”
Cain had been at higher risk due to his age and previous battle with cancer.
“But there was so much more to him than the public saw, and certainly more than the media presented to you. Most people heard of Herman for the first time when he ran for president in 2011. What they didn’t know was his business background,” the statement said. “They didn’t know how he had started his career as a civilian employee of the Navy. It was funny to us because sometimes political pundits portrayed him as kind of a goof – having no idea that during his time working for the Navy, he was literally a rocket scientist.”
Before running for president in 2011, Cain worked as the CEO of Godfather’s Pizza.
Cain was treated for the coronavirus in Atlanta. Two weeks before falling ill, he attended President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“I realize people will speculate about the Tulsa rally, but Herman did a lot of traveling the past week, including to Arizona where cases are spiking,” Dan Calabrese, who has been editor of HermanCain.com, wrote on the website. “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.”