Donald Trump today announced the death of Lynette "Diamond" Hardaway, an entertainer popular with pro-Trump conservatives. Half of the "Diamond and Silk" duo with Rochelle Richardson, Hardaway was 51 years old. She was hospitalized in november, according to news reports which, without identifying a source, claimed Hardaway was suffering from Covid. No confirmation of the nature of that illness or her cause of death was announced early Tuesday.
Hardaway and Richardson also became media contributors when Fox hired them in late 2018 to make videos for its subscription streaming service Fox Nation. They were criticized for using the platform to promote conspiracy theories at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — including that the U.S. death toll was being inflated to make Trump look bad — and the network terminated their contract in April 2020. Later that year they were given a weekend show on the conservative Newsmax TV network. The duo alleged that race was part of their dismissal from Fox, as they wrote in their 2020 memoir Uprising: Who the Hell Said You Can't Ditch and Switch? — The Awakening of Diamond and Silk. And they retained the support of the president, who defended them in a series of tweets.
There is of course a fundraiser, which was announced with Hardaway's death.
