Herman Cain dead following COVID-19 battle
74-year-old Herman Cain, former businessman and Republican presidential candidate, has passed away after being hospitalized with COVID-19.
Ben Shapiro responded Thursday to what he called the "ugly" reaction by some prominent pundits to Herman Cain’s death from COVID-19.
"He was a 74-year-old survivor of Stage 4 colon cancer," the "Ben Shapiro Show" host said, "and people are dunking on Cain on Twitter because, obviously, he attended President Trump's rally in Tulsa less than two weeks before being diagnosed with COVID 19."
Cain did not wear a mask at the indoor event on June 20. Eleven days later, Cain was hospitalized after testing positive for the coronavirus.
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"This is the rationale for many on the left...because obviously if somebody whose politics you don't like dies of COVID, then you get to dunk on them ... that's basically the way our garbage world works," Shapiro added.
While tributes to Cain poured in as word of his death began to spread early Thursday, others used the moment to attack Trump and his supporters. Stand Up Republic executive director Evan McMullin used the news to refer to Trump rallygoers as a “science denial Trump cult.”
“Herman Cain was hospitalized for coronavirus two weeks after he attended Trump’s Tulsa rally without a face mask. He’s the first senior casualty of the science denial Trump cult. The question is whether even that can wake others up about the dangers of Trump and the virus,” McMullin wrote.
CNN contributor Ana Navarro-Cardenas said, “Covid doesn’t care about partisanship.”
FORMER GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE HERMAN CAIN DIES AT 74 FROM CORONAVIRUS COMPLICATIONS
Shapiro called the response "ugly stuff" and "very, very bad news" and argued that there is "no evidence" that Cain first became infected with the virus at the Tulsa rally.
"The kind of dunking on people after they die of COVID is pretty gross," Shapiro told listeners.
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"Here's the reality," he went on. "There are plenty of people dying of this who have been wearing masks and have been being careful and there are plenty of people in the media who have been quite, shall we say, cavalier about the activities in which people should and should not engage, up to and including mass rallies, so long as they are for the public purposes that so many of our elite like.
"So," Shapiro concluded, "spare me some of the crocodile tears on behalf of people who really are not happy with Herman Cain's politics."
Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.
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