Who are Diamond and Silk, the pro-Trump sisters at the center of the Facebook controversy?
Mark Zuckerberg wrapped his second day of congressional testimony to address Facebook privacy concerns, and the CEO faced tough questions about a pair of Trump-loving sisters.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, amid discussion of the Cambridge Analytica data breach that affected 87 million Facebook users, Zuckerberg was asked whether the social media site engaged in political censorship, specifically regarding conservative sisters Diamond and Silk.
“Why is Facebook censoring conservative bloggers such as Diamond and Silk?” asked Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, on Tuesday. “Facebook called them ‘unsafe’ to the community. That is ludicrous. They hold conservative views. That isn’t unsafe.”
“Congressman,” Zuckerberg answered, “in that specific case, our team made an enforcement error, and we have already gotten in touch with them to reverse it.”
Just so you know, we will always have our Presidents back.
"Don't Get It Twisted!"(Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead) pic.twitter.com/d5YwEqbT3g
— Diamond and Silk® (@DiamondandSilk) March 24, 2018
And on Wednesday, while alleging that Facebook suppresses trending conservative news, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, used Diamond and Silk, with their 1.4 million Facebook followers, as examples. “To a great many Americans, that appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias,” said Cruz.
Diamond and Silk, otherwise known as sisters Lynette Hardaway (Diamond) and Rochelle Richardson (Silk), of Fayetteville, N.C., have gained an obsessive following for their pro-Trump views on immigration, border security, and the economy. “First of all, if y’all haven’t noticed: We black. … And just because we black, we found out, that doesn’t mean we have to vote Democrat,” Diamond said in 2016, according to Rolling Stone.
On their show Chit Chat Live, which airs on “The Viewers View,” their YouTube channel with more than 142,000 followers, they take aim at the president’s perceived enemies, such as Hillary Clinton, Megyn Kelly, FBI director Robert Mueller for his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with the president during his marriage to Melania Trump.
Thank you Diamond and Silk! https://t.co/qdsLUy2hqD
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2016
The sisters are former Democrats who joined the Republican Party when Trump declared his presidential campaign in 2015, reported the Atlantic. “When he announced and we heard everything that he stood for, it was on and poppin’, and we’ve been on the Trump train ever since,” Hardaway told the publication.
She added, “Listen, we keep voting for the same system that only hands us some crumbs and thinks that’s OK. We deserve more than crumbs; we need a slice of the cake. … That’s why we look at Donald Trump. He can fix this mess. He can fix this economic mess. He can bring back opportunities for everyone.”
Diamond and Silk also leaned toward Trump because they perceived Clinton to be out of touch. “When she runs around with a bottle of hot sauce, when she walked up in the black church trying to sing the Negro spirituals — she knows she don’t go to a black church,” Diamond said in 2016, per Rolling Stone. “When she’s running around here doing the nae nae and doing the black dances. Get out of here. You’re not black. You got the Clinton Foundation. What has your foundation done for black people in the hood, like Detroit? Chicago? You were born in Chicago and you ain’t never done nothing.”
The pair has appeared onstage at Trump rallies, joining Lara Trump’s “Women for Trump” tour in 2016 and earning praise from the president himself. “How great are they?” Trump said of the sisters at a North Carolina rally in December 2016.
Hardaway and Richardson did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s request for comment; however, on Wednesday, they appeared on Fox News to express their disbelief at being brought into the congressional hearings. “We were never taken down, we were still up,” said Diamond. “But there’s algorithms on our page that will not allow our viewers and our followers and our fans to see our content — we’re not coming up in their newsfeed.”
That same day, the sisters told talk-show host Laura Ingraham that in September, they noticed that their Facebook engagement had suddenly stopped, so they contacted the platform for answers. “They kept giving us the runaround,” said Diamond. “Then, they wrote and they said they deemed our content and our brand unsafe to the community. And we are the brand — two chicks that are down with politics that love our president and love our country.”
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