Trump stopped wearing COVID masks because they tainted his BRONZER: Cassidy Hutchinson reveals the chaotic virus response – and said Mark Meadows confessed ‘We killed Herman Cain’
- Hutchinson writes in her memoir that she pointed out to the president that his makeup was getting everywhere
- Herman Cain, the 2012 Republican candidate, was hospitalized with Covid after going without a mask at a Trump rally
Former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson claims he stopped wearing masks because they smeared his bronzer, and Mark Meadows admitted “We killed Herman Cain” at a rally in Oklahoma at the height of the pandemic.
Hutchinson said she pointed out to Trump that his makeup was getting everywhere.
She said Meadows admitted that a superspreader campaign rally Trump held indoors in Tulsa in June 2020 led to the death of 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, according to CNN.
Hutchinson’s book provides new details about the Trump White House’s chaotic COVID response, which likely cost the ex-president reelection in 2020.
resident Donald Trump removes his protective face mask as he poses atop the White House Truman Balcony after returning from a hospital stay at Walter Reed Medical Center, October 5, 2020
Trump’s supporters proudly ignored mask rules to follow their leader, but the ex-president initially tried wearing a mask during a tour of a mask factory in Phoenix, Arizona in May 2020, two months into the pandemic.
Trump “chose a white mask,” Hutchinson wrote, according to an excerpt in The Guardian, and then asked staff what they thought.
“I shook my head slowly,” Hutchinson recalled. “The president took off the mask and asked why I didn’t think he should wear it. I pointed to the straps of the N95 I was holding. When he looked at the straps of his mask, he saw that they were covered in bronzer.”
“Why didn’t anyone else tell me?” she remembered the president snapping. “I’m not wearing this thing.”
She noted that the press criticized Trump for not wearing a mask on the trip “unaware that the depth of his vanity had caused him to reject masks — and that millions of his fans followed suit.”
When Trump finally donned a mask publicly — in July 2020 and during a trip to Walter Reed — he wore a navy blue mask, which is said to better hide makeup smudges.
Trump also grew tired of social distancing and decided to hold his first campaign rally in months in June 2020.
Donald Trump with Herman Cain
Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testifies as the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol holds a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, June 28, 2022
The original plan for the rally – to be held on June 1 in Tulsa, Oklahoma – was criticized because Tulsa had been the site of a racing massacre 99 years earlier.
Juneteenth was supposed to be an uplifting holiday for African Americans, as it marked the day the last enslaved Americans were informed of their freedom.
Vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris said at the time, “This isn’t just a nod to white supremacists — he’s throwing them a welcome back party.”
The Trump campaign bowed to pressure from Black leaders and changed the date — but they kept the city and location, meaning attendees would gather indoors and many people would flaunt health advisories to remain masked.
Among them was Cain, one of the most prominent black Republicans.
By early July, Cain had been hospitalized due to COVID.
He died later that month.
“We killed Herman Cain,” Meadows told Hutchinson, she wrote in her book Enough.
She said he asked for Cain’s wife’s phone number.
A spokesperson for Meadows disputed Hutchinson’s account to CNN.
The spokesman said it was insulting for Hutchinson to suggest Meadows reacted this way to the death of 74-year-old Cain.
“In the days that followed, he expressed his annoyance that the media would blame the president for Mr. Cain’s death,” Meadows’ spokesman said.