--- title: How Herman Cain Set the Stage for Donald Trump description: The Republican politician and businessman died July 30, weeks after attending Trump's controversial Tulsa rally canonical: https://time.com/5874219/herman-cain-dies-legacy-trump/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-07-31T18:20:08.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:52:01.340Z article:section: Politics og:title: Herman Cain Helped Define the American Black Conservative Movement. He Also Set the Stage for Trump og:description: The Republican politician and businessman died July 30, weeks after attending Trump's controversial Tulsa rally og:url: https://time.com/5874219/herman-cain-dies-legacy-trump/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8825b6ccf874e80c/698a10ec096a94e3f36a8796/herman-cain-obit.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: Herman Cain og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Herman Cain Helped Define the American Black Conservative Movement. He Also Set the Stage for Trump twitter:description: The Republican politician and businessman died July 30, weeks after attending Trump's controversial Tulsa rally twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8825b6ccf874e80c/698a10ec096a94e3f36a8796/herman-cain-obit.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Herman Cain Helped Define the American Black Conservative Movement. He Also Set the Stage for Trump > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. 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It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=df013070-d4a4-466a-a561-d203228cefbe&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: 9-9-9 and Beyond: TIME Interviews Herman Cain [Watch (HLS stream): 9-9-9 and Beyond: TIME Interviews Herman Cain](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/dDLAlAab.m3u8) (6:01)  _Published 2011-10-12. TIME correspondent MIchael Crowley talks with Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain about his recent rise in the polls_  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jul 31, 2020 6:20 PM UTC  Herman Cain in his office in Stockbridge, Ga. on April 17, 2019. Herman Cain in his office in Stockbridge, Ga. on April 17, 2019. Melissa Golden—Redux  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jul 31, 2020 6:20 PM UTC [Herman Cain](https://time.com/5862608/herman-cain-coronavirus-positive/) remembered the 1996 moment that changed his political trajectory as clearly as any in his life. The businessman was advising [Jack Kemp](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375%5F1946448%5F1946400,00.html)’s vice-presidential campaign and accompanied the boss to the iconic Sylvia’s soul food restaurant in Harlem for an event. A man in the crowd [shouted](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/magazine/herman-cain-talks-about-herman-cain.html) out to Cain and his colleagues: “Black Republicans? There’s no such thing.” The same man, in Cain’s [telling](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/herman-cains-race-problem/2011/03/04/gIQAO1dGyL%5Fblog.html), called them “Uncle Toms.” The episode so angered Cain that when he got home from that campaign swing, he switched from a registered independent to a card-carrying member of the Republican Party. And over the next quarter-century, the child of the segregated South became one of the best-known Black Republicans in the country, briefly rising to be his party’s presidential frontrunner for the 2012 nomination and remaining one of the most quotable stars in conservative media. So committed to his party’s stick-it-in-the-eye ethos was Cain that he flew to Tulsa, Okla., for President Donald Trump’s [first return](https://time.com/5856614/trump-campaign-election-tulsa-rally/) to the campaign trail after [100,000 U.S. coronavirus deaths](https://time.com/5843349/coronavirus-death-toll-100000/), despite dire [warnings](https://time.com/5854925/anthony-fauci-coronavirus-risks-trump-rally/) from public health experts. At that indoor rally on June 20, the stage 4 colon [cancer](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cain-beats-odds-against-surviving-colon-cancer/2011/10/13/gIQABFRqsL%5Fstory.html) survivor [posed](https://twitter.com/THEHermanCain/status/1274489632886075398?s=20) for pictures without wearing a mask and sat in the packed stands with fellow fans of the President. On June 29, Cain tested positive for the coronavirus. On July 2, his aides [announced](https://twitter.com/THEHermanCain/status/1278735184893009921) he had been [hospitalized](https://time.com/5862608/herman-cain-coronavirus-positive/). While fighting the disease, his Twitter account continued to criticize mask-wearing and to promote unproven endorsements of hydroxychloroquine. On July 30, Cain aides announced he had died. From the White House, Trump attributed the death to “the thing called the China virus.” Cain, among the most prominent Americans to die during this pandemic, was 74. In many ways, Cain and Trump were cut from the same cloth. Neither had been elected to any political post before running for the White House. Both delighted in needling the Republican Party’s establishment and the mainstream press. They shot from the hip, campaigned in slogans and didn’t much care to learn the details. Both men were dogged by allegations of sexual affairs and inappropriate behavior, and both denied the allegations; they proved disqualifying for Cain—who ended his bid in December 2011 under intense scrutiny—but they did not derail Trump just one election cycle later. They were also both savvy exploiters of the media, often saying things they knew would provoke outrage and thus amplify the celebrity at the core of their bids. Indifference toward—if not hostility against—what had come before was a cornerstone of their strategy, not a flaw. Cain was born in Memphis in 1945 to a domestic worker mother and a janitor father. When his dad was hired to be the chauffeur for the head of Coca-Cola, the family moved to Atlanta, where Cain would graduate from Morehouse College. He then completed his graduate studies at Purdue University after civilian service in the Navy. From there, Cain moved from engineer to executive with Pillsbury and its subsidiaries of Burger King and Godfather’s Pizza, where he would be its C.E.O. In 1988, he oversaw [Godfather’s buyout](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1988/09/20/585688.html?pageNumber=75) from Pillsbury. Throughout the same time, he held positions with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. That part of his resumé led Trump to consider Cain for a position in his Administration, a move that drew dissent from fellow Republicans who were not eager to revisit the allegations against Cain. For three years, Cain led the National Restaurant Association, a lobbying arm for the industry that paid settlements to at least two women who detailed Cain’s unwanted advances. His was not a typical career in his post-C.E.O. years. Cain became a sought-after motivational speaker, an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2000 and a Senate one in 2004\. As the Tea Party movement started to organize after Barack Obama’s election to the White House, Cain emerged as one of its strongest spokespeople. When the 2012 election cycle began, Cain decided to run the scrappiest of campaigns focused on an untraditional travel schedule that often seemed more like a book tour than an organizing effort. His novel “9-9-9” tax plan—proposing a 9% corporate business flat tax, a 9% personal income flat tax and a 9% national sales tax—drew eye-rolls from economists but curiosity from voters. Antipathy toward frontrunner Mitt Romney proved sufficient to give Cain a chance to rise in the late summer and fall of 2011, until his personal life just proved too much. But he didn’t shrink from public life. Instead, he became a ubiquitous voice and reliable critic of Democrats. He’ll perhaps remain best known, though, for his tax plan that made little sense to most economists. Even with his death, the “9-9-9” sloganeering stayed on the front-burner. On Twitter, Romney [took](https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1288853916935913474?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw) one last good-natured jab at the tax plan: “St. Peter will soon hear ‘999!’ Keep up the fight, my friend.” ## Transcript I'm Michael Crowley with Time Magazine, and we're honored to be joined today by Herman Cain, a candidate for the Republican 2012 presidential nomination. A, former CEO of Godfather's Pizza. Who is having his moment in the campaign. Recently finished third in a Fox news national poll, and won the Florida Republican Party's straw poll. Also has a new book out. This is Herman Cain. My journey to the White House. Herman Cain, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Michael. It's a pleasure. So, you are running as a businessman. You have turned around some struggling franchises and companies. Tell us what lessons you learned. From those experiences in the business community, and how those lesson apply to the U. S. economy. Let's take the Godfathers Pizza example. Godfathers was suppose to go bankrupt. Godfathers was trying to do too much, too fast, with too little resources. It lacked focus. So, I developed with my team a strategy around, let's get back to the core things that made this company great. Let's focus. That allowed us to focus our marketing. Focus our advertising. Focus our price, pricing structure. This is how you approach any problem situation. What is the problem? And so I use the same approach, to talk about the problems that this country faces. The problem is, how do you inspire the business sector? Here's how you inspire the business sector. Lower taxes. Less regulations. And certainty. Right now we don't even know what the tax rates are gonna be January 1st, 2013. Which is less than a year and a half away. Businesses don't plan based upon uncertainty. They plan based upon certainty. This is why I developed But 9, 9, 9 plan. And as you know know 9, 9, 9 starts with throw out the current tax code. Throw it out. We as a nation have complained about the tax code since [ INAUDIBLE ]. But nobody wanted to just throw it out. And start with something fresh. 999, a 9 % business flat tax, a 9 % personal income flat tax. And a 9 % national sales tax. It replaces, the revenue that we would get from corporate income taxes. Personal income taxes, capital gains taxes, the death tax, and the payroll tax. What, what level does that work out to as a percentage of the economy, does the 999 plan percentage wise work out to be. Do you know and do you have a level of spending that you think we should get down to relative to GDP percentage wise? Yes, I think it's gonna be somewhere around 18 % or less. Mm- hm. The 999 plan, I'm gonna ask Congress to send me that legislation and it becomes the law of the land. It's not gonna be temporary. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna accept something that says we're gonna do it for two or three years to see how it works. No! That's part of the problem we have today, uncertainty. We're not gonna do a trial run. We're gonna pas this and it's gonna work and provide the business the community with certitude. So that's what we're gonna give to the business community. Get out of their way and they will create jobs. I happen to speak to Michael Steel who's a big admirer and supporter of yours. Right. And we talked some about race and the Republican party and the national electorate. And the idea that there's a racist element in the Republican Party, and as you know this was said about the Tea Party, you think that's wrong. And, in fact, you think that you are a demonstration that it's wrong. Exactly. I was speaking at Tea Parties starting in April of 2009, before it was cool. There's no racism in this whole Tea Party movement. The only thing that liberals have, to try and discourage people from speaking their voice, is to try and intimidate people with labels. And you can tell I get a little bit upset about this, because there is no racism in the tea party. No more than there's racism in America. Do we live in a completely non- racist society yet? No. Are there probably some people who go to Tea Party events who have racism in their heart? Probably yes. But there, but this, this idea that it is so prevalent, is absolutely false. And I am walking proof of that. Related to that, it strikes me that, that, the the black Republicans who are prominent in the public conversation tend to be quite conservative. Is there something about the, the, the thing that draws African- Americans to the the Republican party that draws them farther to the right? I believe that more blacks are conservative. But they don't know it. I had the opportunity to address an audience of black Baptist ministers. I started my presentation as follows, how many of you all in here believe that we pay way too much in taxes? Everybody hands went up. How many you all believe that marriage is between one man and one woman? 60 ministers raised their hand. I said, how many of you all, you know, believe that life begins at conception. 60 ministers raised their hand. As a congratulations, you conservative it when you didn't know it. At the end of my presentation as I've talked about solutions, many of them stood up and said, gentlemen, we've got some re- evaluating to do. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5874219/herman-cain-dies-legacy-trump/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5874219/herman-cain-dies-legacy-trump/"},"headline":"Herman Cain Helped Define the American Black Conservative Movement. 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