There's always someone willing to sell their soul for their fifteen minutes of fame, and if they're Trump supporters, Fox will put them on the air. You Tube "stars" Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, better known as “Diamond” and “Silk,” have been in the news lately after they were invited to the Commerce Department’s headquarters last week, supposedly to discuss ways to expand their business.
YouTube Stars Who Met With Feds to 'Grow' Trump-Themed Business Were Paid by Trump Campaign:
The Commerce Department revealed Diamond and Silk’s visit in a photo posted on the department’s official Twitter account, which said the duo had met with the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) to “discuss how to grow their business and build their brand.”
The tweet was deleted hours later. [...]
A Commerce spokesperson told Gizmodo the tweet was deleted “out of an abundance of caution” as the department was not clear it had received permission to post the photo. “Diamond and Silk were here to talk about minority business development,” the spokesperson said. “They reached out to the Acting National Director of MBDA, [whom] they had met previously, to discuss how best to help the minority business community.”
The spokesperson declined to elaborate on how the Commerce Department was helping Diamond and Silk “build their brand.” At present, they offer only two products in their online store, both Trump-branded pins. [...]
The meeting would seem perfectly innocent, were it not for the fact that Diamond and Silk were paid Trump campaign consultants.
The Trump campaign denied paying Diamond and Silk for their regular on-stage appearances at political rallies. But an amendment to the campaign’s 2016 FEC report, released in May 2017, reveals the YouTube stars were in fact cut a check shortly after the election: a meager $1,274.94 for their “field consulting” work.
Questions had been raised by reporters last summer over what Trump aides brushed off as coincidence: Ace Specialties, a company the Trump campaign reportedly paid more than $2 million for campaign swag, also supplied the pro-Trump merchandise sold on Diamond and Silk’s website.
As the article also noted, the two are also frequent guests on Fox "News" and this Sunday, they were back, and making excuses for Trump's refusal to condemn--much less take any responsibility for--the violence and death in Charlottesville. The two repeated his "both sides" nonsense and then took it to a whole new level with their "but, but, but... the Democrats are the real racists" claptrap.
Right wingers love to parrot that line and always conveniently omit that fact that the entire Civil Rights movement existed and that those Dixiecrats left the party and became Republicans.
HEGSETH: Well, here to get some reaction on the news of the day, we're going to bring in social media sensations Diamond and Silk. Thank you for joining Fox & Friends Weekend. It's great to have you both.
HUNTSMAN: Good morning, ladies.
HARDAWAY and RICHARDSON: Thank you for having us.
HEGSETH: Of course, we need to get your thoughts on what happened yesterday in Charlottesville, how the president responded to it and, of course, to how we always see how his critics have responded to the president. What's your take?
HARDAWAY: Well listen. Well, first of all, the president cannot be one-sided, he has to look at everything that's going on.
RICHARDSON: That's right.
HARDAWAY: And when you look at these groups, these neo-Nazi groups, the KKK which was created by the Democrats and all of these other groups, they were all spewing hate, and they were all creating violence.
RICHARDSON: That's right.
HARDAWAY: And all of them should be condemned and denied. Period. It can't be one-sided. All of them was wrong for doing what they're doing. Listen, we are a country of diversity...
RICHARDSON: That's right.
HARDAWAY: If you don't want to live in this country, then you need to build yourself an island and go over there.
RICHARDSON: That's right.
HARDAWAY: But we have to live in this country together, and people's freedom of speech has to be protected because with it's protected by the First Amendment. So we can't look at one side, we have of to look at all sides, because all of them have created violence. Now nineteen people are injured and a person is killed because of why?
MORRIS: They came there to protest from all over the country. They drove to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue there in Charlottesville. Where do you come down on that point, the removal of the, of these Confederate statues?
HARDAWAY: Okay. But these confederate statues were put up by Democrats, so this is what I say. If you going to take these statues down put them in a museum...
RICHARDSON: That's right.
HARDAWAY: ...because we can never let the Democrats forget on what they did to our country-- when it comes to manipulating people in order to dominate.
RICHARDSON: That's right, and we've got to also keep in mind that we are the United States, not the divided states, and we are one race, that's the human race.
HUNTSMAN: It was a message to similar to what we heard from President Trump yesterday. I mean, interesting about you two, you both voted for former President Barack Obama last election. The president's been criticized though for his speech yesterday, for the fact that he wasn't one sided, that he should have been more critical of the white group, the white nationalist group involved in this. How do you respond to the critics out there?
HARDAWAY: Well, you know what? We've got to look at all sides... I didn't like the white nationalists, the KKK, the neo-Nazis, David Duke, but I also didn't like Black Lives Matter and Antifa. You can't go shut down nobody's free speech, and you can't be in the country talking about you don't want to live with black people or minorities, so it's all wrong on all sides.
RICHARDSON: All sides.
HARDAWAY: Can I just also make another point? We had Hillary Clinton saying I’m going to start the resistant movement. Those things are part of the problem, and it needs to be addressed.
RICHARDSON: That's right.
HARDAWAY: Because we shouldn't be resisting the administration, the president. We should all be living in harmony and getting along. And we're going to have to learn how to agree to disagree, especially when we have a disagreement in this country.
