CLEVELAND — Herman Cain, who ran for president in 2012, on Monday revealed the advice he gave Donald Trump when the New York businessman first entered the race for the White House.
In an interview with The Daily Caller here at the Republican National Convention, Cain, a radio host, said he told Trump: “Be prepared for a lot of lawsuits that you can afford that I couldn’t afford.”
Cain was referring to the accusations of past harassment from female employees that led to his exit from the 2012 race. The former CEO of Godfathers Pizza, who still denies those accusations, said he couldn’t afford during his presidential race to fight the charges which surfaced in the media.
“I will share this with you that I haven’t shared with a lot of people,” Cain said during a 10-minute interview on media row. “When the primary process got started, for the Republicans, when they had 17 people running for the Republican nomination, one of the candidates called me to ask my advice. Only one. It was Donald Trump.”
“We talked for about 20 minutes,” Cain elaborated. “He said, ‘what is the best piece of advice you can give me.’ And I said, ‘be prepared for a lot of lawsuits that you can afford that I couldn’t afford.’ And I was dead serious.”
“Because when I ran, I had three separate allegations against me,” Cain said. “And what happened was some people in the media didn’t do their homework, because if they had, they would’ve looked at what the background was of the people making the allegations. And then people would’ve said, ‘Well wait a minute. How can we believe this people?’ People took it as carte blanche truth. And I couldn’t afford three lawsuits and fund a campaign to get it off the ground all at the same time. And I told Trump, you can afford to do a lot of lawsuits if you have to.”
Cain agreed during the interview that he and Trump shared some similarities in their races: “I was an outsider. I had to self-start my campaign financially like he did. And the establishment didn’t like me too well. They don’t like Donald Trump.”
Asked if he’d be open to joining a future Trump administration, Cain said: “I would consider a position in the administration. Absolutely. And when I say consider it – because you have to consider a lot of things. The job, the requirement, the sacrifice, you know, and all of that…But I would seriously consider. It wouldn’t be an absolute yes but I would consider it.”
“Secondly, I think Donald Trump knows me well enough that he would ask me to do something that he thought I could make an impact on…I wouldn’t want the Treasury, but I could be impactful relative to the Treasury. I could be impactful with just about any function…When I first took over Godfathers, I have never made or eaten a Godfathers pizza. So he understands that if he asks me to do something and go to a particular problem area, he knows I will approach it like businessman. Ask the right questions, work on the right problems and remove barriers to get things done.”
