Herman Cain’s Zombie Twitter Account Is Posting Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories Now

After Herman Cain passed away last month, his family and social media team decided to keep his Twitter account active. They’ve been posting all the same sort of pro-Trump, anti-Democrat, anti-Black Lives Matter nonsense the Black Voices for Trump co-chair posted before his death, but this weekend, the account also posted some puzzling COVID-19 propaganda.

The now-deleted tweet linked to an article about underlying pre-existing conditions and their relationship to coronavirus-related deaths. “It looks like the virus is not as deadly as the mainstream media first made it out to be,” the tweet read.

The message is incredibly bizarre given that Cain died from the coronavirus, which he reportedly contracted after attending a Trump rally.

The article the account tweeted is from the extremely conservative Western Journal, which is less an actual journalism outlet and more a website designed to be shared on Facebook, founded by a guy who staked his claim peddling conspiracy theories about Bill Clinton and later tried to convince conservative readers that Barack Obama was secretly Muslim.

So when you hear that this site is saying only 6% of reported COVID-19 deaths are in fact due to the virus, you’ll want to take that with all the grains of salt you have at your disposal.

In reality, the CDC study that number comes from lists other contributing factors that have been noted in COVID-19 related deaths. They include things like pneumonia, influenza, and respiratory arrest—all issues that have been shown to be caused by the coronavirus.

That’s like saying the knife stab didn’t kill him, it was the loss of blood.

Despite its lack of scientific accuracy, the 6% conspiracy theory has been picked up not just by conservative media hacks and Hermain Cain’s ghost, but also QAnon groups, which means it inevitably found its way to Donald Trump’s Twitter account, where he retweeted a Q-related account that posted the “data” in a tweet Twitter then removed for violating its rules on misinformation.

Even in death, Herman Cain is still pushing Trump’s favorite conspiracy theories.

(image: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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