Topic: WorldNetDaily
WND was in full stenography mode for pro-Trump duo Diamond & Silk in an anonymously written April 26 article:
Social media stars Diamond and Silk, the hilarious duo that support the president, testified before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday on allegations of bias against conservatives by Facebook – and their impassioned statements frequently elicited smiles from spectators.
“Facebook censored our free speech!” Diamond charged.
The two, whose real names are Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, said if Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been censoring the speech of anyone on the left, “Democrats would be in the streets right now, marching and calling him all types of racist.”
Some Democrats criticized the decision to hold the hearing, and Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., even called it “stupid and ridiculous.”
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., suggested that the two women were making a great deal of money off the social media network.
“You ladies are very impressive to me,” Johnson said. “You have taken something and moved forward with it, exercising your First Amendment rights, and you’ve made a ton of money off Facebook, is that correct?”
“Absolutely not,” Hardaway shot back. “Facebook censored us for six months.”
But Johnson continued, “The point I’m trying to make is you all have been bashing Facebook and you’ve been making a ton of money, isn’t that correct?”
Hardaway replied: “We didn’t bash Facebook. We brought the light on how Facebook has been censoring conservative voices like ours. … They won’t let us monetize on Facebook. They stopped it for six months, 29 days. They limited our page.”
Richardson added, “And YouTube did also by demonetizing 95 percent of our videos for no reason at all, deeming it as hate speech.”
Johnson kept pressing the women, noting that they “still sell merchandise.”
“Even if we sell merchandise that don’t have anything to do with Facebook,” Hardaway responded. “Facebook censored our free speech, and shame on the ones that don’t even see that we have been censored.”
Just one problem: Diamond & Silk were never "censored" on Facebook. As ThinkProgress documents, the duo's Facebook page shows that total interactions have remained steady over the past year, which inclues the six-month period of time that they claim they were "censored."
WND also takes Diamond & Silk at their word when they claim their payment from the Trump campaign, designated in campaign records as "field consulting," was actually reimbursement for travel expenses. The Trump campaign now claims it was a travel reimbursement.
