‘We killed Herman Cain’: Trump staff regretted catastrophic Tulsa rally, according to new book

Staff members on Donald Trump's 2020 re-election felt responsible for the death of former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who died of coronavirus after attending the campaign's Tulsa rally.

The regret was reported in the forthcoming book "BETRAYAL: The Final Act of the Trump Show" by ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl, an excerpt of which was published by Vanity Fair.

Karl explained how Trump was eager to return to the campaign trail as his poll numbers cratered in response to his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Karl said "the Tulsa rally would end up being a political disaster and, for Trump, the worst day of his entire campaign."

The morning of the rally, eight aides tested positive for coronavirus.

"According to two senior campaign officials, after the eighth person tested positive, two of them with the Secret Service, word came down from the campaign leadership: STOP TESTING. This directive came after NBC News broke the story that six members of the campaign staff who had traveled to Tulsa to set up the rally had tested positive, a report that actually understated the number of infected staffers. The headlines were embarrassing," Karl reported. "As Trump flew to Tulsa aboard Air Force One, he watched the news coverage on television. It was all bad—television reporters talking about the positive COVID tests, the massive security, and, worst of all, the lack of a crowd."

Karl described the rally as "a metaphor for how Trump had mishandled the pandemic. He dismissed the warnings of public health professionals, downplayed the danger, believed he could talk his way out of it all, and showed a total disregard for the consequences of his actions."

While a large crowd did not turn out for the rally, Herman Cain did attend and posted a photo of him in the crowd without a mask. A month later, he had died of COVID-19.

"The news devastated Trump campaign staff. Many felt like they were to blame for his death. 'We killed Herman Cain,' one senior staffer told [ABC News reporter Will Steakin] not long after Cain's death," Karl reported.