On June 20, 2012 Republican presidential contender Herman Cain attended Trump's mask-optional rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Twelve days later, the tenders of Cain's Twitter account announced that Cain has tested positive for COVID-19 and is currently hospitalized with "serious" symptoms.
As campaign surrogate, Cain has been contemptuous of mask usage and dismissive of pandemic dangers. He tweeted from within the arena on June 20, with few masks to be seen in the crowd.
Just yesterday, Cain bragged that masks "will not be mandatory" for Trump's Friday event at Mt. Rushmore, tweeting "PEOPLE ARE FED UP!"
Because of Cain's travel schedule, is not completely clear whether Cain was infected with the virus at Trump's Tulsa rally or at other events: "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," wrote HermanCain.com editor Dan Calabrese. A less gracious interpretation of that statement would be that Cain has been sufficiently indifferent to travel precautions as to be unable to trace his own contacts, and may have possibly himself spread the virus to others before becoming symptomatic enough to require hospitalization.
Trump's Tulsa campaign event was intentionally structured to ignore pandemic safety recommendations, even as Oklahoma cases began to escalate. At least eight Trump staffers involved with the event also tested positive for the virus. Trump and Pence have continued to ignore those precautions in trips to new pandemic hot spots Texas, Arizona, and Florida.