PERSON: Lynette ‘Diamond’ Hardaway (Deceased)

Political Commentator

Ineitha Lynnette “Diamond” Hardaway (1971-8 January 2023) was an African-American conservative political activist and the sister of Rochelle Richardson.

Ineitha Lynnette Hardaway was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1971, the younger sister of Rochelle Richardson. Their parents were televangelist pastors who supplemented their income by selling herbal concoctions, pillows, blessed dolls, and anti-witchcraft wreaths.

During the early 2010s, Lynnette (nicknamed “Diamond”) and Rochelle (nicknamed “Silk”) started a YouTube channel which was supportive of Black Lives Matter and against police brutality, but, by 5 July 2015, they had adopted right-wing views, opposing undocumented immigration. She and her sister became an overnight sensation due to their YouTube videos, and they switched their party affiliation; at a Trump rally during the 2016 presidential election, Hardaway said, “we got off of that Democrat plantation, and we switched our party to Republican to vote for Donald J. Trump”. Diamond and Silk came to have over 267,000 YouTube subscribers and 1.8 million likes on their Facebook page, with most of their fans being middle-age white women.

They later became Fox News contributors, but they became controversial even at Fox News for accusing Nancy Pelosi of being a “non-functional alcoholic” due to a doctored video showing Pelosi apparently slurring her words while speaking slowly. In March 2020, Fox released them after they promoted Coronavirus conspiracy theories including those surrounding 5G towers. She died in 2023 at the age of 51.

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